Overview

This program involves a collaboration of MIT with a consortium of three Portuguese Universities, with possible future collaborations with other universities and associated research laboratories.

The three Portuguese Universities leading the program and confering joint degrees are:

• Universidade Técnica de Lisboa / Instituto Superior Técnico (UTL/IST);
• Universidade Nova de Lisboa (NOVA);
• Universidade do Minho (UM). 

Embracing the theme of developing future leaders and innovators in Bio-Engineering, the main foci of the collaboration are Innovation in Bio-Engineering, Cell and Tissue Engineering, and Bioprocess and Computational Biosystems Engineering. MIT faculty will help develop the curriculum materials with the Portuguese institutions and will offer to teach at some class meetings at the Portuguese institutions. The support of Portuguese companies is also being actively sought in the biopharmaceutical, pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, healthcare and medical devices areas to develop industry linkages with the program.

The three main objectives of the Bio-Engineering Systems focus area are to:

• Promote new inter-institutional post-graduation training and opportunities, aimed at educating a new generation of leaders in bio-engineering technical innovation in Portugal;
• Create new knowledge through R&D, targeting strong participation in the European Framework Research Program, FP7 (2007-2013); and
• Promote industrial, health-care and environmental biotechnology education and research that makes it possible for new start-ups, which implement new models of interaction between universities and enterprises, government, and society.

Creating a Portuguese Bio-Engineering Systems degree program that is offered jointly between Portuguese universities is a new approach. By adding the essential areas of technical innovation and leadership development, it will realize the highest quality multidisciplinary education and research in bioengineering.

Frequent exchanges of faculty and students will occur for course preparation, lecturing, and research collaboration. The goals for a steady state program are as follows:

• 6 MIT researchers/professors visiting Portuguese Universities/year and others participating in lectures at MIT or to PT via videoconference
• 6 Portuguese researchers/professors visiting MIT/year
• 8-10 PT students at MIT/year (PhD + research partnerships)
• 4-6 MIT students visit Portuguese Universities/year