Gonçalo Figueira (CEGI)

“The coordinators of CEGI suggest Gonçalo Figueira for “The Incredibles”, due to his outstanding work and role played in the coinciding organisation of two proposals for European projects: TRUST and SHIFT. However, this nomination is overdue, since it should have been made before knowing the results of said applications. Nonetheless, the good news is that the TRUST pilot was approved – and it is the first European project led by CEGI. This project aims to develop a transparent, reliable and unbiased tool than can be applied to several use cases. The overall budget of the project is €4M (with 900K allocated to INESC TEC). Gonçalo, we’d like to publicly congratulate you.”.

– CEGI Coordinators

Can you briefly describe your involvement in the two applications?

It all started when I decided to explore H2020 open calls after a session that SAAF organised for CEGI. I was able to find two calls that focused on some subjects I was working on. From that moment on, I started reading articles, reports and documents on the themes of the calls and realised how we could present ourselves. I contacted dozens of potential partners (focusing only on the profiles that interested us), and luckily the top ones said “yes”. Obviously, we had to be responsible for writing the proposals, and Cristiane Ferreira was extremely helpful in the process. Pedro Amorim played a crucial role right from the start, while Catarina Pinto and Luís Guimarães contributed significantly to the second application.

What were the main challenges during the elaboration of proposals? And how did you overcame them?

There were many challenges indeed. One of the main obstacles was the fact that we were developing a H2020 proposal for the first time, which forced us to figure everything out by ourselves – from the finest to the wide-ranging details. In this sense, I’d like to thank Ricardo Bessa for his support, since he generously and fairmindedly gave me precious tips and shared one of his winning proposals. Thanks to that, we did not start from scratch. In fact, we started from a significantly advanced stage.

Nonetheless, we had to set up the consortia and lead the proposals within a two-month period. In this case, we did start from scratch. Finding people with the right profile, contacting them and convincing them that we had a good proposal, while coordinating them at the same time, took a lot of time. This alone seemed like a “full time job”. There were days when I did nothing but dedicate myself to this. Consequently, with only one month until the deadline, we did not have a single line in the proposal (knowing that we would have to write almost everything by ourselves). This was quite intimidating, but we did it, eventually – after some tiring weekends and fewer nights of sleep.

Once approved, what will be Gonçalo’s role during the TRUST project?

TRUST is a FET project focused on fundamental research, in the sense of developing and exploring a new technology paradigm. In this case, the goal is to create one of the paradigms of the next generation of explainable Artificial Intelligence. The project has a budget of 4M€ and a duration of four years, and it involves seven partners from six countries. Four out of seven are R&D institutions, which will develop the new A.I. paradigm, while the other three are start-ups that work with A.I. in different domains, aiming to promote this new paradigm in the market.

Since this is the first project of this nature led by CEGI, it will certainly be a huge challenge. I truly believe that it will require a substantial team effort and I will be a part of it. I hope to lead many of the actions, but I also rely on those who were essential to the application, and who will be even more important throughout the project: Pedro Amorim, Cristiane Ferreira, Luís Guimarães and Bernardo Almada Lobo.

How do you comment on this nomination?

I am very happy, of course. But I think this is an recognition not only of my work, but also of those who lead me and those who are led by me (and the roles did change quite often…). I would like to thank every single one of them.