Instituto Superior Técnico MHSE • MHIP (IST, also known colloquially as Técnico, and stylized TÉCNICO LISBOA) is a public

school A school is an educational institution designed to provide learning spaces and learning environments for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is sometimes compuls ...

engineering Engineering is the use of scientific method, scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad rang ...

and

technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...

, part of

University of Lisbon The University of Lisbon (ULisboa; pt, Universidade de Lisboa, ) is a public research university in Lisbon, and the largest university in Portugal. It was founded in 2013, from the merger of two previous public universities located in Lisbon, th ...

. It was founded as an autonomous school in 1911, and integrated in the

Universidade Técnica de Lisboa The Technical University of Lisbon (UTL; pt, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, ) was a Portuguese public university. It was created in 1930 in Lisbon, as a confederation of preexisting schools, and comprised the faculties and institutes of vete ...

in 1930. IST is the largest school of engineering in

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

by number of enrolled students, faculty size, scientific production and patents. IST has three ''campi'', all located in the

Lisbon metropolitan area The Lisbon Metropolitan Area ( pt, Área Metropolitana de Lisboa; abbreviated as AML) is a metropolitan area in Portugal centered on Lisbon, the capital and largest city of the country. The metropolitan area, covering 18 municipalities is the l ...

: Alameda in

Lisbon Lisbon (; pt, Lisboa ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 544,851 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km2. Grande Lisboa, Lisbon's urban area extends beyond the city's administr ...

Taguspark Taguspark is a science and technology park located in the municipality of Oeiras, Greater Lisbon subregion, Portugal. The Park covers an area of approximately 150 acres, and accommodates several research and development labs, innovative start ...

in Oeiras and Tecnológico e Nuclear Campus in

Loures Loures () is a city and a municipality in Portugal which is part of the District and Metropolitan area of Lisbon. It is the fifth most populous municipality in the country, with a total population of 201,632. History There was early human sett ...

, and consists of ten departments that are responsible for teaching the undergraduate and postgraduate programs. Each department is organized in sections, which group together specific subjects within its scientific area. In addition, the laboratories of the several departments support the teaching and research activities carried out at IST. It offers 18 undergraduate programmes attended by more than 6,000 students—covering a wide range of areas of knowledge—including not only all the traditional engineering specializations, but also emerging scientific areas such as Biomedical Engineering, Aerospace, and Physics Engineering. Over 4,500 students are enrolled in 32 masters, 33 doctoral and several specialized programs. IST has produced 1292 PhD holders.

History

Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) was created in 1911 from the division of the Instituto Industrial e Comercial de Lisboa, along with ''Instituto Superior do Comércio'', currently Insituto Superior de Economia e Gestão.

Alfredo Bensaúde Alfredo (, ) is a cognate of the Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Saxon name Alfred (name), Alfred and a common Italian language, Italian, Galician language, Galician, Portuguese language, Portuguese and Spanish language personal name. People with the given na ...

, an engineer, was IST's first dean (1911–1922) and promoted a wide-range reform in the Portuguese higher technical education, including the first engineering courses at IST: mining, civil, mechanical, electrical, and chemical-industrial. IST's second dean was Duarte Pacheco (1927–1932), also an engineer, who was responsible for the construction of the campus at Alameda, designed by architect Porfírio Pardal Monteiro. Meanwhile, IST became part of the recently created

Technical University of Lisbon The Technical University of Lisbon (UTL; pt, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, ) was a Portuguese public university. It was created in 1930 in Lisbon, as a confederation of preexisting schools, and comprised the faculties and institutes of vete ...

. Throughout the following decade, the image of engineers from IST was projected into major engineering works, promoted by Duarte Pacheco, who was by the time Minister of Public Works. Between 1952 and 1972, 12 study centres were established in Portugal, three of them at IST, in the fields of chemistry, geology and mineralogy, and electronics. These centres were responsible for promoting faculty training and scientific qualification through doctoral studies in universities and research centres abroad. In 1970, the minimum period for obtaining a bachelor's degree decreased from six to five years, and IST denoted a remarkable increase of the number of students. During this period, scientific research at IST increased significantly, through the creation of the ''Complexo Interdisciplinar'' which fasten together various autonomous research units, and contributes to transform IST in a reference school at European level. In the 1990s, new degrees were created in cutting-edge engineering areas, including master and doctoral programmes. In 2001, IST inaugurated a new campus in the municipality of Oeiras, located in Taguspark, the first Portuguese

science and technology park A science park (also called a "university research park", "technology park”, "technopark", “technopole", or a "science and technology park" (STP)) is defined as being a property-based development that accommodates and fosters the growt ...

, which is home for more than 120 technology-based companies. In the academic year of 2006-2007, the Declaration of Bologna was successfully implemented for all IST programmes, aiming the establishment of a European Education Area to make Europe a competitive knowledge-based economy. Today IST is involved with several of Portugal's R&D&I and technology transfer institutions and offers a vast number of degrees in science and engineering areas, at undergraduate, master and doctoral levels. IST is also part of several networks and international programmes to promote student mobility, both at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Through a large number of agreements with other institutions worldwide, it participates in more than 20 Dual Master programmes, and joint PhD programmes with

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

, CMU,

UT-Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduat ...

and EPFL.

Teaching

As of 2019, IST offers undergraduate and graduate studies in: * Aerospace Engineering * Applied

Mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

and

Computation Computation is any type of arithmetic or non-arithmetic calculation that follows a well-defined model (e.g., an algorithm). Mechanical or electronic devices (or, historically, people) that perform computations are known as ''computers''. An es ...

Architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

* Biological Engineering *

Biomedical Engineering Biomedical engineering (BME) or medical engineering is the application of engineering principles and design concepts to medicine and biology for healthcare purposes (e.g., diagnostic or therapeutic). BME is also traditionally logical sciences ...

Chemical Engineering Chemical engineering is an engineering field which deals with the study of operation and design of chemical plants as well as methods of improving production. Chemical engineers develop economical commercial processes to convert raw materials int ...

Civil Engineering Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including public works such as roads, bridges, canals, dams, airports, sewage ...

* Data Science * Telecommunications and Information Networks Engineering *

Electrical and Computer Engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

* Electronics Engineering *

Environmental Engineering Environmental engineering is a professional engineering discipline that encompasses broad scientific topics like chemistry, biology, ecology, geology, hydraulics, hydrology, microbiology, and mathematics to create solutions that will protect and ...

* Geological and Mining Engineering *

Industrial Engineering and Management Industrial engineering is an engineering profession that is concerned with the optimization of complex processes, systems, or organizations by developing, improving and implementing integrated systems of people, money, knowledge, information a ...

* Information Systems and Computer Engineering * Materials Engineering *

Mechanical Engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and mathematics principles with materials science, to design, analyze, manufacture, and ...

* Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering * Physics Engineering IST is also actively involved in several networks and international programs to promote student mobility, both at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Through a large number of agreements with other institutions worldwide, IST participates in more than 20 Dual Master programs, and joint PhD programs with

, CMU,

, and EPFL.

Affiliations

IST is a member of several academic and scientific consortiums and associations, including: * TIME association (

Top Industrial Managers for Europe Top International Managers in Engineering (T.I.M.E.), formerly Top Industrial Managers for Europe, is a network of fifty-seven engineering schools, faculties and technical universities. The oldest European network of engineering schools in its f ...

) for researchers and student exchanges and double-degree in Europe. T.I.M.E. Coordinator is Prof. José Santos-Victor. * CLUSTER (Consortium Linking Universities of Science and Technology for Education and Research), a network of leading European Universities of Technology; their fundamental missions are advanced research and higher education of engineers, scientists and architects. *

Conference of European Schools for Advanced Engineering Education and Research CESAER is a non-profit association of universities of science and technology in Europe. CESAER was founded on 10 May 1990, seated in the Castle of Arenberg in Leuven, Belgium. The association has 58 universities of science and technology in 26 c ...

(CESAER), a non-profit association of leading engineering universities in Europe and of

Partnership of a European Group of Aeronautics and Space Universities The Partnership of a European Group of Aeronautics and Space UniversitieS (PEGASUS) is a network of aeronautical universities in Europe created in order to facilitate student exchanges and collaborative research between universities. It has been or ...

(PEGASUS).

Academic rankings

IST is among the most productive engineering schools in Europe, according to a 2019 ranking.
Instituto Superior Técnico - World's TOP 50 Eng Univ 2018Instituto Superior Técnico. World's 8th Best Civil Eng Univ 2017

Locations and facilities

Currently IST has three campi: *Alameda campus, located in the centre of

, completed in 1929. *

campus, located in Oeiras, opened in 2000. *IST Tecnológico e Nuclear campus, the former ''Instituto Tecnológico Nuclear'', located in

, transferred to IST in 2011. IST benefits from an IBM

supercomputer A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instructions ...

built in 2007, which is one of the most powerful in Portugal (1.6

TFLOPS In computing, floating point operations per second (FLOPS, flops or flop/s) is a measure of computer performance, useful in fields of scientific computations that require floating-point calculations. For such cases, it is a more accurate mea ...

as of 2007).''IST e IBM lançam projecto de computação de alto desempenho''
in

Diário Digital ''Diário'' is the fourth album by Portuguese fado singer Mafalda Arnauth Mafalda Arnauth (born October 1974) is a Portuguese people, Portuguese fado singer. Life and career Arnauth was born in Lisbon, Portugal, in October 1974, and her ca ...

(17 April 2007)

Notable alumni

IST alumni have held prominent positions in both the private and public sectors of Portuguese society, including several businesspeople, politicians, three

Prime Ministers of Portugal A prime number (or a prime) is a natural number greater than 1 that is not a Product (mathematics), product of two smaller natural numbers. A natural number greater than 1 that is not prime is called a composite number. For example, 5 is prime ...

, one of which became

Secretary-General of the United Nations The secretary-general of the United Nations (UNSG or SG) is the chief administrative officer of the United Nations and head of the United Nations Secretariat, one of the six principal organs of the United Nations. The role of the secretary-g ...

Alfredo Nobre da Costa Alfredo Jorge Nobre da Costa, (10 September 1923 – 1 April 1996), commonly known as Nobre da Costa (), was a Portuguese engineer and politician who briefly served as prime minister of Portugal from August to November 1978. A moderate indepen ...

, Prime Minister of Portugal (1978), Minister for Industry and Technology (1975–76) * Alberto Romão Dias, former State Secretary for Higher Education, university professor, chemical-industrial engineering (1964-2007) * Ângelo Correia, politician and business administrator, chemical-industrial engineering (1968) *

António Câmara António Câmara is a professor at the Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa and has been a Visiting Professor at both Cornell University (1988–89) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1998–99). He was a S ...

, founder and CEO of YDreams,

Prémio Pessoa The Pessoa Prize ( pt, Prémio Pessoa, ), named after Fernando Pessoa, is recognized as the most important award in the area of Portuguese culture. Created in 1987 by the newspaper ''Expresso'' and the IT company Unisys, since 2008 the prize has be ...

winner, researcher and professor at the

Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa The NOVA School of Science and Technology (FCT NOVA or NOVA SST) is a Portuguese faculty of the NOVA University Lisbon located at the ''Caparica Campus'', near Lisbon. The School operates with great autonomy and awards degrees in several eng ...

, civil engineering * António Guterres, former

Prime Minister of Portugal The prime minister of Portugal ( pt, primeiro-ministro; ) is the head of government of Portugal. As head of government, the prime minister coordinates the actions of ministers, represents the Government of Portugal to the other bodies of state, ...

; former president of the

Socialist International The Socialist International (SI) is a political international or worldwide organisation of political parties which seek to establish democratic socialism. It consists mostly of socialist and labour-oriented political parties and organisations. ...

and former

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is a United Nations agency mandated to aid and protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people, and to assist in their voluntary repatriation, local integrati ...

; current

, electrical engineering (1971) *

João J. R. Fraústo da Silva João J. R. Fraústo da Silva (Tomar, August 30, 1933 – June 10, 2022) was a Portuguese chemist. Fraústo da Silva received his degree in industrial chemical engineering from the Instituto Superior Técnico in 1958 and his D.Phil. in chemistry ...

, former Minister for Education (1982–83) *

João de Deus Pinheiro João de Deus Rogado Salvador Pinheiro, GCC GCIH (born 11 July 1945), is a Portuguese politician and former Member of the European Parliament for the Social Democratic Party– People's Party coalition; part of the European People's Party–E ...

, politician, Minister of Education, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Member of the European Parliament, European Commissioner, rector, university professor, chemical-industrial engineering (1970) * João Pavão Martins, founder of SISCOG, full professor of Computer Science and Engineering at IST, mechanical engineering (1976) (later got a master's degree in computer science and a PhD in

Artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

from

State University of New York at Buffalo The State University of New York at Buffalo, commonly called the University at Buffalo (UB) and sometimes called SUNY Buffalo, is a public research university with campuses in Buffalo and Amherst, New York. The university was founded in 1846 ...

). * José Manuel Bento dos Santos, businessman, trader, metals broker, cook, gastronomer, chemical-industrial engineering. * José Manuel Tribolet, full professor of Information Systems, PhD from

, co-founder and chairman of INESC-ID, electrical engineering (1971). * Luis Veiga da Cunha, Minister for Education (1979–80) *

Manuela M. Veloso Manuela Maria Veloso (born August 12, 1957) is the Head of JPMorgan Chase, J.P. Morgan AI Research & Herbert A. Simon University Professor in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, where she was previously Head of the Machin ...

, researcher in robotics, professor at Carnegie Mellon University *

Maria de Lurdes Pintasilgo Maria de Lourdes Ruivo da Silva de Matos Pintasilgo (; 18 January 1930 – 10 July 2004) was a Portuguese chemical engineer and politician. She was the first and to date only woman to serve as Prime Minister of Portugal, and the second woman to ...

, first woman to serve as

, chemical-industrial engineering (1953) * Isabel Gago the second woman to study engineering in Portugal and the first woman to teach chemical engineering (1939) * Mariano Gago, Minister for Science, Technology and Higher Education, electrical engineering (1960) * Nuno Maulide, full professor of

organic chemistry Organic chemistry is a subdiscipline within chemistry involving the scientific study of the structure, properties, and reactions of organic compounds and organic materials, i.e., matter in its various forms that contain carbon atoms.Clayden, J.; ...

at the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich histor ...

at the age of 33 (2013) and Austria's scientist of the year (2018) *

Pedro Domingos Pedro Domingos is a Professor Emeritus of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington. He is a researcher in machine learning known for Markov logic network enabling uncertain inference. Education Domingos received an und ...

, researcher in

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

, professor at

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...

, author of The Master Algorithm *

Pepetela Artur Carlos Maurício Pestana dos Santos (born 1941) is a major Angolan writer of fiction. He writes under the name Pepetela. A Portuguese Angolan, Pepetela was born in Benguela, Portuguese Angola, and fought as a member of the MPLA in the long ...

, Angolan writer, sociology professor (did not graduate) *

Paulo Branco Paulo Branco (born 3 June 1950) is a Portuguese film producer. Life and career Paulo Branco was born in Lisbon, and attended the undergraduate program in chemical engineering at the Instituto Superior Técnico but he did not graduate. He star ...

, film producer and distributor, chemical engineering (did not graduate) * Raul Pires Ferreira Chaves, inventor, former Director of Public Works in Cape Verde and Portuguese Guinea, former president of Associação Industrial, Comercial e Agrícola da Guiné * Stephan Morais, first Portuguese to be nominated a

Young Global Leader Forum of Young Global Leaders, or Young Global Leaders (YGL), was created by Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum. The YGL, a non-profit organization managed from Geneva, Switzerland, is under the supervision of the Swiss government ...

by the

World Economic Forum The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international non-governmental and lobbying organisation based in Cologny, canton of Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded on 24 January 1971 by German engineer and economist Klaus Schwab. The foundation, ...

, civil engineering (1996). *

Vasco Joaquim Rocha Vieira Vasco Joaquim Rocha Vieira, GCTE GCC GCIH ComA (; b. Lagoa, 16 August 1939), is a retired Portuguese Army officer who was last Governor of Macau. Background He is the son of João da Silva Vieira (b. Lagoa or Faro on 9 November 1913) ...

, General and Governor of Macao, civil engineering

History

Teaching

Affiliations

Academic rankings

Locations and facilities

Notable alumni

See also

References

External links