In a conversation with Oeiras Valley, Isabel Rocha, Provost of NOVA University of Lisbon, spoke about university housing, the partnerships between the municipality and the university, and new projects that are being born in Oeiras.
Isabel Rocha is also the leading researcher at ITQB NOVA, where she coordinates the Systems and Synthetic Biology Lab.
She has a PhD in chemical and biological engineering from the University of Minho and did post-doctoral work at the Technical University of Denmark.
Her research in biotechnology covers topics such as bioinformatics, metabolic engineering, synthetic biology and systems biology. She has published more than 140 full papers in journals, books and international conferences.
University housing is a concern shared between NOVA University of Lisbon and the municipality. What can you tell us about the residence halls that are going to emerge in Oeiras?
In fact, this is a major concern for us, whether we are talking about residence halls aimed at the student community or at the research community. In Oeiras there are mostly research activities. Considering this present situation, the lack of residence halls is a big limitation to the municipality’s ability to attract researchers from other parts of the country as well as international researchers. On the one hand, there is a lack of cost-controlled housing, but on the other hand, there is also a lack of flexible housing for short stays, which is a necessity when it comes to research activities.
To this effect, we have been working with the various partners of the AgroTech campus, especially the entity responsible for campus facilities, the National Institute of Agricultural and Veterinary Research (INIAV), in order to rehabilitate the existing on-campus residence hall but also to increase its current capacity.
There will be more news on this subject soon, but I think we’ll be able to complete the conceptualization and design phase over the next few months to ensure that within the shortest possible period we can have more to offer to the student community and the community of researchers and lecturers invited or recruited by our various institutes.
The partnership between the university and the municipality is a long-standing one. What other projects can you tell us about?
NOVA University has had a very fruitful partnership with the Municipality of Oeiras through one of our institutions, one that has always been based in Oeiras, the Institute of Chemical and Biological Technology (ITQB). In addition to being a national and international reference institute, it is home to a few hundred researchers and offers a wide range of postgraduate training.
Over the last few years, this relationship has mainly been reflected in activities that have been promoted alongside other institutes based in Oeiras, namely the aforementioned INIAV, the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC), and the iBet – Instituto de Biologia Experimental e Tecnológica (institute of experimental and technological biology). These activities are connected to topics such as science in schools, science education, science for citizens or citizen science and, finally, the promotion of internationalization. A protocol has been in place for a number of years and it has given rise to numerous activities related to the participation of students and teachers from the different levels of education and other citizens in several initiatives.
I can give as an example the ITQB Open Day, an event supported by the municipality which was a great success. It is an annual event which took place last May, although it had an interruption due to the pandemic but has returned this year. In this event, it’s not only the schools and students of the municipality who can take part, but the whole society is welcome to do experiments, to understand how science is done. This initiative has only been possible thanks to the support of the municipality.
In terms of internationalization, Oeiras has also supported these institutions, including NOVA University, in attracting international scientists. One way to do that was by building a place for short-term stays. It is important, given the size of the institutes and the quality of the science there, to always remain in an international environment and to be able to bring in scientists of international reputation to interact with our researchers for short periods of time.
Innovation is perhaps the area in which NOVA University has interacted most directly with the municipality. This collaboration translates into support for the knowledge transfer office which provides services to both the ITQB and the IGC. It is significantly bearing fruit, which we can see through the very meaningful increase in the number of patents registered or the dynamism seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting, for example, in the attraction of companies to projects that were developed at that time.
I would also like to highlight the Proof of Concept program which has been supported by the municipality. It has funded projects that are born out of research and have the potential to create economic and social impact but which need a little support to validate that potential impact. This was the second year the program was in place and it has been very successful, which is noticeable by the participation of several NOVA researchers.
We hope that it will be a seed for other programs we are designing with the municipality which aim to support the launch of science-based start-ups. The ability to create value from the research carried out in our research groups is an area we want to boost because we are aware that the place we are at is not yet where we would like to be, namely because entrepreneurs don’t have the support they need.
In these areas of science-based or technology-based entrepreneurship, which is the correct designation, this support is different from other areas. These entrepreneurs often even need access to laboratories, very specific infrastructures and also a type of training that you can’t hope to find in university courses. With the support of the municipality and together with the other partners, we are designing a set of initiatives that cover these gaps in training and which also make it possible to overcome the problems in terms of access to infrastructure.
Are there any new projects in sight?
There are several projects in the design phase and over the next few months there will certainly be news about them. At the moment, I would focus on two, which are the most mature. The main one is certainly NOVA University’s new Institute for Medical Systems Biology (NIMSB), a research institute with the direct collaboration of the MDC – Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, in Berlin, Germany. Recently, at the beginning of this year, the project received confirmation of support from the European Commission and was ranked 3rd at European level, which presupposes a national compensation, totaling almost EUR 33 million over the next six years.
The Institute aspires to have around 200 researchers at the end of the six years working in this interdisciplinary area that combines biomedical research with data science and biocomputing in order to meet the challenges of a medicine that has to be increasingly personalized. This doesn’t mean that we need medicine to be tailored to the individual, but we now know that many medicines have very positive effects on groups of the population but don’t have such a positive effect on other groups, due to genetic variations in the population. And this is very pressing in areas such as cancer treatment, where cancers that may seem similar respond in very different ways to different therapies, and the same thing is valid in many other areas.
Since the beginning of the year with its conception, and in partnership with the municipality, we thought that the best location for this Institute would be in Oeiras, at the National Agricultural Station, next to our Institute of Chemical and Biological Technology, iBET, and INIAV, because this allows us to form a cluster and a critical mass that guarantees the success of these various initiatives. The Universidade Católica (Catholic University of Portugal) has also recently announced that it will be joining this cluster, and therefore the new Institute will be the catalyst for a series of other activities, particularly in the areas of innovation that I mentioned earlier, and which we will soon have the opportunity to unveil.
Another initiative that has also been approved is a collaborative laboratory in the area of gastronomy, which will be located in the Flor da Murta Palace. It brings together, in addition to NOVA University and the City Council, which are the two formal partners in this project, a group of private institutions that work in the area of gastronomy. For now, the only thing left is to wait for the funding to be validated.
This laboratory aims to be a hub, not for research, but for innovation, and dedicated to gastronomy in three main dimensions: one of them is certainly the technological part of cooking, the other is the nutritional part, and a third vector, the heritage part. At NOVA University we have research in all these areas, involving the NOVA School of Science and Technology, NOVA Medical School and NOVA School of Social Sciences and Humanities, as well as the ITQB. The focus will be on Portuguese gastronomy, including traditional Portuguese dishes, using an approach centered on applying technologies to support their sophistication, guaranteeing nutritional balance and applying a perspective of heritage, of memory, encouraging storytelling around gastronomy.
In addition to the areas of innovation, it will have a very strong training component, not only for specialized audiences – people who work in the sector or want to work in the sector – but also for the general public, for whomever might want to take short courses, even tourists, as it happens in many places in the world, guaranteeing their access to part of the country’s gastronomic heritage.
As well as being Provost, you are also lead researcher at ITQB NOVA in Oeiras. What is your assessment of the municipality’s strategy for science and innovation?
It’s certainly a very positive assessment. Since I’ve been in office at NOVA University, for six years now, our interaction has been one of collaboration in university matters, which complements the direct collaboration of the ITQB. I would stress that there is always enthusiastic support for the various initiatives we propose to the municipality. Often this translates into financial support, definitely for those initiatives to which it is possible to grant it, but sometimes also into organizational support, frequently in the design itself, ensuring the connection to the territory. I think these two components come together very well.
The municipality has staff dedicated to these areas, which is not very common but seems essential to me, and which could be a good example for other municipalities that might want to tread this path: having people who establish relationships with the various institutions based in the municipality and who are the mediators for carrying out initiatives, and guaranteeing this organizational support.
There’s no doubt that all initiatives to support science are essential, but I’d like to highlight the initiatives that have to do with science and society. We are living through complex times in which science has recently demonstrated its importance in dealing with emergencies that require technological and scientific solutions. I think this has been proven with the speedy development of the COVID-19 vaccine, but also the national response capacity to conduct COVID-19 tests, which were essential to control the spread of the disease.
It was an exceptional response that was only possible with the participation of higher education institutions and research organizations, which had the equipment and were able to implement the methods needed to carry out these tests. The laboratories that were on the market didn’t have the necessary capacity, but the universities did. And with the support that sometimes came from municipalities, as was the case with Oeiras, they managed to get this response to the population. Therefore, the relevance of having people who can use sophisticated equipment, develop sophisticated techniques and quickly turn this into a product or service essential to the population quickly became apparent.
Obviously, there is also an economic relevance linked to science. It’s a path where there is still a long way to go. There are many science-based companies in Oeiras. But we’d like there to be more companies whose science was born there and we’re working towards that. It will take some time, but we are creating the conditions for this since we also all know, looking at cases in other regions of the world, that these science-based companies are the ones that have the highest added value, that provide qualified, well-paid jobs and, therefore, it is a model of society that we want and in which we have to invest. Given that we have the tools to do so, because we have the science part figured out, we just have to help take these next steps.
I’d also like to highlight the matter of social relevance. From my point of view, the municipality and the institutions of Oeiras have done a good job and this work needs to be continued, engaging the general population in the world of science. This ensures that the decisions made, both individually and collectively, are based on science and information, allowing us to fight against the scourges of fake news and radicalism. It’s a vaccine much like the COVID-19 vaccine, but one against these kinds of phenomena that we see progressing alarmingly; science is one of the ways we can fight against them, but for that to happen, science has to reach the citizens.
Finally, how do you imagine the future of education and science in Oeiras?
I imagine there will be more schools, particularly from NOVA University, moving to Oeiras or being created in Oeiras. Also new institutes like the one I’ve just mentioned, because there are a number of very, very interesting conditions there – obviously the geographical position, but certainly this support and the critical mass that is being generated. So there’s no doubt that this will happen.
I can see that we are directly contributing to this, to strengthening research in health and life sciences in the municipality. In these areas, critical mass attracts more critical mass, because there is equipment that costs EUR 1 million and it only makes sense to buy it if there are hundreds of researchers using it. This guarantees or is one of the aspects that guarantee the quality of research. I’m sure that, with the critical mass we are creating, we will attract even more of it and strengthen our role as the Capital of Science and Innovation.
