Science and Technology in Portugal - Research and Development

Research and Development

In Portugal, a network of research and development units belonging to public universities and state-managed autonomous research institutions like the INETI - Instituto Nacional de Engenharia, Tecnologia e Inovação, the ITN - Instituto Tecnológico e Nuclear, the INRB - Instituto Nacional dos Recursos Biológicos, the INSA - Instituto Nacional de Saúde Dr. Ricardo Jorge, the IPO - Instituto Português de Oncologia, the LNEC - Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil and the LIP - Laboratório de Instrumentação e Física Experimental de Partículas, makes the core of Portugal's science and technology research output. The funding of this research system is mainly conducted under the authority of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education, namely through its foundation for science and technology, the FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia.

The largest R&D units of the public universities (over 380 units in total which are distributed across 14 public universities) by number of peer-reviewed publications and research grants, include the IPATIMUP, the Instituto de Biologia Molecular e Celular and the Abel Salazar Biomedical Sciences Institute, all of them at the University of Porto; the Instituto de Medicina Molecular at the University of Lisbon; or the Centre for Neuroscience and Cell Biology at the University of Coimbra, among others. Private universities have a lower research output, however, there are a number of research units accredited by the Ministry and the FCT, these include the Facial Emotion Expression Lab at the University Fernando Pessoa. Although smaller and generally with less resources devoted to investigation than the universities, since after the Bologna Process (2006/2007) which allowed the polytechnical institutions to award masters' degrees and required the admission of doctorate-level staff, an increasingly large number of Portuguese polytechnical institutions have also established and expanded their own research facilities. However, polytechnic's limited research activities are very small when compared to the state-run universities due to both a lack of research budget and doctorate-level teaching staff and investigators. Several other scientific fields are covered by specialized research organizations which are noted for their role as technology business incubators, like the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory, the Instituto Pedro Nunes and Taguspark, a science park. The largest non-state-run research institutions in Portugal, include the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência and the Champalimaud Foundation which recognises outstanding contributions to research in vision and associated areas through a major annual award.

The Champalimaud Foundation's research center at the mouth of the River Tagus in Lisbon, opened in 2010 with diagnostic and treatment units for cancer patients on the lower floors and research labs above. The Ibercivis, a distributed computing platform, based on BOINC, that allows all ordinary citizens to participate on scientific research in a direct way and in real time as voluteer donors of unused computer cycles is a joint scientific collaboration of the Portuguese and Spanish governments. The Bial Foundation (Fundação Bial), named after a Portuguese pharmaceutical company, awards one of Portugal's most noted prizes for scientific research in the area of health. A number of both national and multinational high-tech and industrial companies present in Portugal, are also responsible for research and development projects in different fields. The Academia das Ciências de Lisboa (Academy of Sciences of Lisbon), created in 1779, is one of the oldest learned societies in Portugal.

The sole Portuguese science-related Laureate, having been awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1949, was Egas Moniz.