Two projects of IST Instituto Superior Técnico among those selected by FCT to strengthen the fight against the pandemic

The Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) approved 12 research projects under the “AI 4 COVID-19” call, aimed at strengthening the fight against COVID-19 and future pandemics. Among these, there are two projects linked to IST Técnico Lisboa: the “SCOPE- Spatial Data Sciences for COVID-19 Pandemic”, led by the Centre for Natural Resources and Environment (CERENA), and the “DETECT - Data sciEnce Tools for Epidemiologic surveillance using multiple sourCes of data ”, coordinated by the Institute of Systems and Computer Engineering, Research and Development (INESC-ID).

The 12 selected projects represent a total investment of three million euros, of which about 465 thousand are destined for the research centres of IST Técnico Lisboa.

In this 3rd edition of annual calls of the programme for research in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence in Public Administration, 39 applications were evaluated. According to the FCT statement, the program's central objective is the promotion of scientific knowledge based on the analysis of large amounts of data available in Public Administration.

The call “AI 4 COVID-19” is part of the National Digital Competencies Initiative e.2030, also known as Portugal INCoDe.2030, in the area dedicated to research. As in previous years, the chosen projects aim to promote the extraction of useful information from large data repositories (big data) and the development of artificial intelligence systems. In this edition, and because the circumstances call for it, emphasis was put on the questions related to the fight against COVID-19 - as well as other pandemics that may eventually spread in the future.