Archive

On 11 October, Universidade Portucalense will welcome three leading Portuguese scientists to discuss the advances, challenges, and implications of Artificial Intelligence, in the debate “Artificial Intelligence: Generative or Degenerative?”, at 2.30pm, in auditorium 201.

Ambassador Martin Pohl and former Minister of Foreign Affairs António Martins da Cruz are the speakers.

Applications for the Innovation Management System – Practitioner Applied Training: open until February 15th, 2023.

Universidade Portucalense was recently admitted as a full member of the EUA-European Universities Association.

The “Body between Pleasure and Pain” is the theme of the II Interdisciplinary Clinical Luso-Brazilian Seminar, which will take place on 18, 21, 22 and 23 November.

On the 30th of November, at 2:30pm, Portucalense University hosts the Conference of the Castle under the theme “Nuclear Proliferation: challenges to European security”, in the 201st auditorium.

Video Pedro Rodrigues, Researcher at Portucalense Institute for Human Development, presents the project “VisEnLearn” which aims to “explore the influence of (ir)relevant visual environments on the learning of school children”. School-age children are continuously exposed to classrooms with several visual elements, such as drawings, maps and graphs, placed on the wall, which aim to stimulate learning. In this context, the central question of this line of research is: “What is the influence of visual content exposed in the surrounding environment of the classroom on children’s learning gains, specifically when this content is related versus unrelated to the information to be learned? “Exposure to visual materials in the surrounding environment, particularly in school-age children, may compete for cognitive resources, namely attentional, but this is still an assumption that needs scientific evidence, to which this line of research aims to contribute”, says Pedro Rodrigues. The researcher indicates that this line differs from other studies in several aspects, in that, “besides comparing the performance between a non-decorated and a decorated environment, it also manipulates the characteristics of the information presented. In addition, the participants’ learning of the taught information will be tested immediately and one week later”.  “This is an important aspect, since some learning strategies may not have immediate effects, but are rather explained by the testing effect. Finally, our manipulations will be implemented in real classrooms and not in a laboratory, as happened in the work of Fisher and collaborators (2014), or on a platform as in Rodrigues and Pandeirada (2018),” he explains. This line of research could provide important results for educational practices, being a starting point for other new studies to find an ideal point of visual communication in classrooms.

On 18th November, Portucalense University promotes the first international conference “The Future Design of Streets”, in Porto, with the purpose of sharing views on the challenges facing the design of streets and the city. The aim of the conference, which will be held at the headquarters of ANJE, is to discuss the visions of future that respond to the diversity and complexity of urban life, the evolution of mobility solutions and the major environmental issues expressed in the objectives for sustainable development established by the United Nations. The conference will feature interventions from European architects and urban planners with relevant practice in the study and design of streets. The platform ‘the Future Design of Streets’, which is organizing the conference, is coordinated by Daniel Casas Valle (‘Urban Designer and Planner’) and Ivo Oliveira (architect), with the support of the Department of Architecture and Multimedia Gallaecia of Portucalense University, the School of Architecture, Art and Design of the University of Minho and the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto.

On 21st October, the Vice-Rectors, Departmental Directors and Research Unit Directors took office. They assumed their functions last February, when they were nominated by the Board of Directors. The Rectory, headed by Fernando Ramos, is composed of António Ferrão Filipe, Vice-Rector for Teaching, and Jorge Leite, Vice-Rector for Research. The Departments are headed by: Mariana Correia (Director of the Department of Architecture and Multimedia Gallaecia), Paulo Morais (Director of the Department of Science and Technology), Manuela Magalhães (Director of the Department of Law), Alexandra Araújo (Director of the Department of Psychology and Education), Shital Jayantilal (Director of the Department of Economics and Management) and Isabel Freitas (Director of the Department of Tourism, Heritage and Culture). In the sphere of Research, Mariana Correia took on the direction of the CIG – Gallaecia Research Centre, Jorge Leite the INPP – Instituto de Desenvolvimento Humano Portucalense, Wladimir Brito the IJP – Instituto Jurídico Portucalense and Luís Pacheco the REMIT – Research on Economics, Management and Information Technologies. At the inauguration ceremony, which took place in the Sala de Atos, the Chairman of the Board of Directors, Armando Jorge Carvalho, emphasized “the great responsibility” of the functions, “expecting a cohesive and committed team”. He exhorted the importance of “applying the essential characteristics for those who lead: dedication, availability, loyalty, collaboration, spirit of mutual help and exemplary attitude”.  He reinforced the idea that it is fundamental to understand the present moment as “a new cycle that involves new challenges” and presupposes “maintaining and improving the growth and development that Portucalense University has achieved in recent years”.  He concluded, reaffirming his confidence in the elected representatives: “I believe that with a small effort of all, we will make the University even stronger”.

Joaquim Borges Gouveia, of Energaia, and Paulo Bessa, of Amorim Cork, are the guest speakers.