In a conversation with Oeiras Valley, the City Councilor for Education, Libraries, Science and Innovation, Sports and Youth in Oeiras, Dr. Pedro Patacho, took stock of the municipality’s Strategy for Science and Innovation, talked about ambition and introduced some of the ongoing projects.
He holds a Teaching Degree in Natural Sciences and Mathematics from the Instituto Superior de Ciências Educativas (Higher Institute of Educational Sciences), a Master’s in Education from the University of Lisbon and a PhD in Didactics and School Organization from the University of A Coruña, in Spain.
What is your assessment of the municipality’s Strategy for Science and Innovation in the last few years?
Oeiras has a considerable business density, numerous highly prestigious science centers and higher education institutions, the most qualified population in the country, a high-quality public and private education network, as well as a very well-organized and well-planned territory. The levels of wealth generation place us as the second largest economy in the country, after Lisbon, and we have the highest per capita income in the country.
Let’s also consider the fact that today we are part of a new economy, whose basis and engine of development is undoubtedly knowledge and what people can do with the knowledge and skills they acquire, not just in the formal education system, but through all the opportunities and training experiences they have throughout their lives. Looking at all of this, we realized that, if the focus is on knowledge, if science and innovation are pivotal to the new economy, or rather, to competitiveness in the new economy, it made perfect sense to have a strategy for science and technology – a strategy that sought to do one thing: connect all the potential that the municipality contains, find synergies and unite efforts around a common vision.
And that, of course, is what we did with the interested parties, so to speak, the council’s stakeholders, with a working tool – the partnership – and with a working philosophy – the network. Generating a network of partnerships and collaborative work. And the results are very positive.
In the first axis of development, more closely linked to science, technology, society, culture and education, we’ve done some absolutely extraordinary things.
Today, for example, we have an absolutely extraordinary program underway to accelerate the teaching of science in schools. At a time when the country, since 2012, has stopped investing in the development of experimental teaching in primary and middle school, Oeiras is moving forward with a Program for the Development of Experimental Teaching in our schools, in our municipality. We are implementing it in partnership with research teams, science centers, higher education institutions, and laboratories based here.
From two school science clubs, we’ve gone up to nearly a dozen. In just a few years, we’ve reached ten school science clubs. What’s more, a whole program is underway to support teachers, to help the schools, and to involve students, through Oeiras EDUCA+. We’re doing things that have never been done before, at a pace like never before, and involving thousands of students, hundreds of teachers and dozens and dozens of schools.
There are ongoing Citizen Science projects in which the citizens of Oeiras spontaneously get involved in activities with scientists. This can implicate collecting data, activities such as biodiversity monitoring and biodiversity conservation in our municipality, or activities related to food production and the nutritional quality of food as well as aspects like intensive versus organic food production.
In addition to these projects, there are also a large number of lectures, colloquia, debates and initiatives throughout the year, which involve hundreds and hundreds of people all over the municipality. The biggest names in science, innovation and technology from our country are present and active in these events. Science and scientists are now closer to the community and closer to the citizens.
I’m obviously quoting by heart, and mentioning aspects related to just one of the axes of development, more closely linked to culture, society, education and its links with science, with technology and with innovation. If we move on to the second of the three existing axis – innovation – the balance is also very positive.
We have supported and continue to support the innovation dynamics of the institutions based in our territory. The Inovalley office was created, a shared office for innovation and the transfer of technology to the market, to help in contracting with the industry and in patent registration. Basically, it’s meant to support all of this, the scientists, this whole process, the identification of value in their science and its transfer to the economy through value-added products or services. And this office is proving to be an extraordinary success. Associated with it is the Proof of Concept Fund, amounting to EUR 250,000, EUR 150,000 of which are financed by the City Council. And there is much more being done in this area.
We have another segment, a third one, an axis about internationalization, where there is also a rather positive assessment. Perhaps it’s the axis where we need to invest more and work harder. It has to do with the international visibility of the Municipality of Oeiras, through the science, the knowledge and the innovation we are producing, which means bringing the world’s top scientists here on a regular basis, encouraging sabbaticals, meetings…
A very important step towards this was the creation of the Collaborative Centre in partnership with the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC). It is an international center that works like a turntable on which many scientists from all over the world, from many nationalities and many areas of knowledge, pass throughout the year.
There have already been interactions with the Instituto Superior Técnico, in addition to IGC’s traditional partners, such as ITQB NOVA. I was very pleased with that, because it is, in fact, this philosophy of networking, of building collaborative networks, this philosophy that the partners have seized for themselves, that is both driven by the municipality, but also lived, appropriated and transformed by the local stakeholders. And this is absolutely extraordinary.
I’m sure that Casa dos Cientistas (The Scientist’s Home) will make an excellent contribution to this internationalization strategy. It’s a project to restore the Palacete dos Sete Castelos, in the heart of Oeiras, in Santo Amaro de Oeiras, and it’s going to be a residence dedicated to welcoming senior researchers, who are therefore very prestigious in their fields and who visit our municipality as part of their partnership and research projects with the institutions based here.
We want to welcome Nobel prizes here, we want to bring the best scientists in their fields here. We want them not only to come here because their institutions have partnerships with ours, since we have world-class institutions, but we want to show them Oeiras, what this unique ecosystem in the country is all about.
We want them to be well received, in a palatial building that will be dedicated to them, which is very different from being in a completely impersonal hotel with a completely abstract environment. It’s a whole house, designed to host talks, debates on science, to welcome scientists, to accommodate them, to house them during their stay here in Oeiras, so that when they leave, after their short stays of one, two or three weeks, or even one month, they can bear witness to the way they were received, in a municipality that values science, that values knowledge.
We’re the municipality that hosts one of the biggest rock concerts in the world, Nos Alive, but it’s also the municipality where scientists and entrepreneurs are the real rock stars.
What were the main challenges you faced in its implementation?
The challenges are the traditional and usual ones for this type of project. They are both internal and external. However, I think it’s important to emphasize not only the challenges but also the ambitions.
The challenges are what would be expected, starting internally. The Oeiras City Council is a very large organization. If we gather the municipal enterprises and the entire school system, we have more than 3,000 workers.
We came to the conclusion that, for this strategy to be successful, it had to have a dedicated team, so we created a dedicated team. But, at a certain point, there was so much work that the dedicated team was no longer enough. In order for it to grow, we gave it organic expression. In other words, we created a new division within the municipality’s own organization, which we called the Science and Innovation Division, with a head of mission and her team.
If we ask any executive in the Oeiras City Council if they need more staff in their area of activity, we probably won’t find one who says no. And here, in science, it’s no exception. The size of the team is always an issue.
Therefore, one of the challenges is the team. The work keeps growing, and as it grows, we reach more and more institutions, we have more and more programs, projects and activities. And oftentimes we find ourselves with the same team. So, naturally, having a more robust team that can do more, faster, and be closer to the institutions and closer to the projects is an important challenge. But it’s a challenge that we are facing little by little, solving it gradually.
Another regular challenge we always face is budgetary issues.
The mayor made a political commitment to dedicate at least 1% of the municipal budget to science. In 2023, Oeiras had a budget of EUR 245 million. We’re talking about EUR 2.45 million earmarked for science. But it’s still not enough.
Since we are talking about an area at the level of a local authority, a city council, these are the kind of challenges where what we’re doing is extremely pioneering. People are extremely enthusiastic, starting with the City Councilor, my office and the services themselves. The enthusiasm is enormous because we all feel that we are doing something different, something that has never been done before and that is uncommon for a local authority and differentiating. Better yet, we feel the results, we feel the support from the institutions, from the science centers, from people in general, and this is extraordinarily positive. That’s what fuels us. It’s this recognition from the community.
As for external challenges, I would perhaps say that they are also the usual suspects.
Science is a little different in this respect, because it is an activity that, contrary to the stereotype that often exists in people’s heads – that the scientist is “a crazy-looking guy who is locked away in a laboratory doing things on his own” – as a human undertaking, science is an intensely collaborative activity. Therefore, scientists are usually predisposed from the outset to open up to the community, to unlock their work, disseminate it and collaborate with other people.
At an institutional level, on the contrary, it’s not so easy because the institutions compete with each other. And so, a challenge that has always existed, that continues to exist, but which we are gradually overcoming, is building this collaborative network. More than getting the City Council to collaborate with the various institutions, it’s getting the various institutions to collaborate with each other that is the real challenge.
There is already some history of this. Institutions related to the life sciences, for example, the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, the ITQB, iBet and INIAV, already had a tradition of collaborating with each other and have been intensifying this collaboration.
Between the life sciences and other areas, for example, it’s not so common. Which means that a big challenge is, in fact, for this network to materialize through interinstitutional cooperation, rather than unilateral cooperation between the City Council and each of the institutions.
But more than the challenges, one remark I’d like to make is about the ambitions.
If what has been planned in recent years comes to fruition, what the future holds for us here in Oeiras, in the area of science, is absolutely remarkable. Oeiras can establish itself as one of the largest centers of science and innovation in Europe in certain areas of knowledge, particularly in life sciences, and it can decisively be the most important center in Portugal.
Earlier, I said that the life sciences institutions we have here already have a history of collaboration with each other that is relevant. Well, as a result of all this work that has been done as well the idea of intensifying the network and attracting higher education institutions, there is a prospect of strong growth in this cluster. And those are really good news, since it’s very important for Oeiras to have more science centers and higher education institutions, because this is part of our economic development model.
We don’t have a budget of EUR 245 million by chance. We have a EUR 245 million budget because we have more than 540 companies per square kilometer generating EUR 28 billion in turnover every year. Most of them are technology-based companies and companies that provide value-added products and services, employing highly qualified people whose average wages are very high. This is reflected in the municipality’s tax collection, which allows us to have strong redistribution of resources and investment policies which generate quality of life for everyone. This is the secret of Oeiras. In Portugal it is probably the municipality where the ideal of social democracy has been most fully realized.
Feeding this economy based on a business fabric that produces value-added products and services and employs highly qualified people means that we have to continue to attract centers of knowledge and knowledge production to our territory that continue to create strong links with the business fabric and continue to feed the hiring needs of that business fabric.
We need to have more engineers in the various areas and train more people in science. We also want these engineers and new scientists to have a solid humanistic base, and the institutions are aware of this. It is very important to us. History has already shown us that science and technology without humanism can be dangerous.
And so, the attraction of higher education institutions, centers of knowledge, of science and knowledge is a critical aspect for the development model Oeiras has in place.
As a result of all this progress over the last few years some partners who were already here and others who weren’t decided to invest in Oeiras. The NOVA University of Lisbon, whose Institute of Chemical and Biological Technology is based in our municipality, has decided to increase its investment in Oeiras, and some big news will be announced soon.
The Universidade Católica Portuguesa (Portuguese Catholic University) looked very closely at Oeiras and at what Oeiras was doing and decided to seek our collaboration in developing its advanced training and research in biomedicine, having recently opened its Medical School in Sintra, our neighboring municipality. We are supporting the creation of Católica’s new biomedical research institute, which is already being incubated in Oeiras, with a municipal support of EUR 1.641 million, and, therefore, the Católica Biomedical Research Centre is also here.
At Quinta de Cima do Marquês de Pombal, combining everything that exists there, plus the involvement of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa, plus the creation of a new school from NOVA University of Lisbon, plus the possible transfer of a series of capacities that NOVA University had elsewhere, a mega scientific campus will be created. What will happen there involves between 2,500 and 3,000 scientists working every day, embracing a dynamic of One Health – one campus, one health, and 360º health research, be it human health, animal health, dietary health, nutrition and food development.
In other words, what is being prepared there is going to be absolutely remarkable.
I’m confident that we’re going to succeed and there will certainly be news, later this year, in 2023, communicated publicly about these major investments. We’re talking about approximately EUR 130 million of investment in science over the next five to six years. It’s remarkable.
How has the Oeiras Valley project contributed to achieving the objectives in your areas of responsibility and what contribution do you think it will have next year?
Oeiras Valley is an idea. More than a project, it’s an idea, it’s a concept that then materializes through the ramifications it produces in all the areas of governance of the Oeiras City Council.
And when I say that it’s a concept, that we’re talking about an idea, I’m referring to a carefully planned territory, highly qualified from the point of view of public facilities, of what is available to citizens, not only in terms of facilities, but also in terms of services, which brings together a very large group of high value-added companies. And it is ready and willing to receive more investment.
And just as I was saying earlier, we have highly qualified people, this is an idea of a highly qualified territory, ready to receive investment at any time and in any part of that territory. It’s this idea that reflects the concept of the Valley, of a prestigious territory.
This concept then has ramifications everywhere: in the environment field, in planning, in public works, in education, in sports, in culture, in youth related affairs, you name it, every area of governance in the municipality ends up being imbued with this concept, this idea. Every manager and every technical team in every area, be it culture, the environment, youth, sports, science, planning works in education, be it anything, every team is imbued with this spirit.
In my areas of responsibility, I try to contribute to this concept and to the affirmation of the Valley, that is, of this territory. Therefore, from this point of view, the contribution of the Oeiras Valley project is absolutely remarkable, because the work of the City Council is no longer fragmented, it gains an absolutely remarkable coherence because all this work converges towards a vertex that is that concept, and we all feel like we are working towards materializing that concept, that extraordinary vision.
Consequently, in a simpler line, I would say that the extraordinary contribution of the Oeiras Valley project is to give a meaning, an orientation, a direction to all the work of the City Council, no matter what field.
We are all imbued with this spirit, we are all focused on this concept and contributing to the materialization of these development vectors in each area of governance. And that is remarkable.
Evidently, it’s also an idea that has been worked on and honed in the head of a mayor who is remarkable and who, from my point of view, is the best mayor Portugal has ever seen in a democratic regime. After many decades of work and experience in regional governance and after greatly maturing this idea, he has arrived at this result, the development of this concept that is now public and noticeable. Getting here has been an extraordinary success, both internally and externally. Mayor Isaltino is a very experienced man, with extraordinary vision, great sensibility and a rare political intuition. It’s his idea. He gave us a track to run on every day.
With each initiative that the Oeiras Science and Technology Strategy promotes in the fields of science, technology and innovation, it is very common for us to be approached by external visitors asking what the Oeiras Valley is. People who are very interested in finding out what the municipality has to offer them, how they can come here, which means the community has grasped this concept well, especially the business community, higher education institutions and the scientific community. I think they feel comfortable with this idea and are beginning to feel a certain pride in being part of this ecosystem: the Oeiras Valley ecosystem. And that’s the great value of the idea.
Over the last year, we’ve seen researchers linked to educational establishments in the municipality receiving grants and projects developed in Oeiras winning prizes. Is this a reflection of the municipality’s investment in science and innovation?
Innovation projects that are leaders in their areas of expertise are being awarded every year and each year proper conditions are also created for these innovation projects to be converted into products and services that reach the market and benefit people’s lives.
As a matter of fact, just a fortnight ago, on the well-known television program Falar Global (Talking Global), the InnOValley awards were discussed, and it was stressed that they are producing knowledge that can reach the market and solve well-being and health issues, as well as other problems in people’s lives.
Another example is a program that we created with our partners, namely the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, a scholarship program that we called the Oeiras Valley Frontier Research Award. It’s an award that encourages the continuation of cutting-edge research worldwide. And we use the European Research Council‘s ranking, where the most valuable scientific research grants in Europe are listed, but with a budget limit every year. There are research projects and research teams with top rankings, but they don’t get funding because the budget isn’t enough and they fall below the funding line.
We’ve asked the European Research Council for permission to use this ranking and we’re inviting scientists who want to come to Oeiras to do so with the help of a very valuable grant. In fact, it’s two grants – EUR 125,000 each. In total, EUR 250,000 for them to come, to continue their work in Oeiras and to be able to apply to the European Research Council in the following year, so they don’t lose momentum and continue to develop knowledge and their research.
This program was so successful that the Minister for Science, Technology and Higher Education, Professor Elvira Fortunato, replicated it and launched it last year at national level. Nowadays it’s a project of the Foundation for Science and Technology, inspired by the Oeiras Science and Technology Strategy‘s work with the institutions here.
What about next year? What are the Oeiras City Council’s priorities in the fields of education, sports, youth, libraries and science?
We will, of course, continue to work and intensify this action. There is an extraordinary higher education scholarship program in place. When we arrived here, the Municipality of Oeiras was guaranteeing 37 scholarships a year. This academic year, 2022/2023, we have already awarded close to 1000 scholarships and we expect to reach between 1200 and 1300 next year. This can only be reflected in what will be the rise in qualifications of the population of Oeiras, which is already the highest in the country.
In a few more years’ time, it will certainly distance itself from the rest of the municipalities, because we are investing like never before in education and knowledge. This investment is not reserved for the institutions’ projects, but it’s meant for people as well, for people’s ambition to pursue a university education and then, from there, develop their projects and ideas and succeed.
That will obviously give continuity to everything we are doing in the fields of education, culture, society, and in the connection with science and innovation, too.
We carried out an extraordinary experiment. We created the first International Science Festival in Portugal. There had never been one before.
The first European Science Festival dates back to 1989 in Edinburgh, Scotland, and many science festivals have been created in a more developed Europe over the decades. But Portugal, curiously, despite having the Ciência Viva Foundation (Living Science Foundation), has never had an International Science Festival. And this Oeiras agenda, under the Oeiras Valley flag, was the agenda that created the first International Science Festival in Portugal, which had two extraordinarily successful years, but from which we also learned a lot. That’s why this year, 2023, we won’t be holding a Science Festival but will instead return in 2024 with a different, better, more ambitious festival, with a greater connection to our territory, and more national and international media projection and visibility. This will happen as a result of the work that has already been done and the learning that has been consolidated. The fact that we won’t be holding the Science Festival in 2023 doesn’t mean that Oeiras doesn’t still want to have one of the best science festivals in the world. We will restart this process in 2024.
And then the big ambition is obviously focused on the investments that are coming.
Disclosing a little bit of what is to come, there is the partnership with the NOVA University of Lisbon, with whom we hope to sign a memorandum of understanding in October. This will clarify which four major projects we will be working on together over the next few years.
In fact, the investments that are planned under this memorandum of understanding are so significant that the university has even decided to include the signing of this memorandum in the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of NOVA University of Lisbon. It’s very symbolic, in the sense that it conveys the idea that the next 50 years of the university will also pass through Oeiras.
That being said, I would say that the great ambition for the future is what we are planning in partnership with NOVA University of Lisbon and also what is being planned for Quinta de Cima do Marquês de Pombal, in the field of life sciences, with the prospect of it becoming one of the most important life sciences and health research campuses in our country and in Europe.
