As the year draws to a close, we are invited to pause and reflect. The holiday season creates this small break in our rhythm and offers us a moment of perspective. One thing that stands out, year after year, is how demanding much of our work at INESC TEC is, and how rarely our path is obvious. This always calls for judgement, patience and thoroughness, and relies on our ability to collaborate well. Over time, that is what turns projects into impact, and a group of people into a community, across years and generations.
In 2025, as we observed our 40th anniversary, we framed it as a space to connect memory with direction, bringing past and future into the same conversation. We revisited our origins to gain a clearer understanding of what has endured and what has evolved: a way of working at the intersection of science and innovation, an institutional culture founded on collaboration, and an outward orientation that remains central to our identity.
That anniversary frame also helped us sharpen our sense of what our time asks of our mission. We are living through accelerated technological change, geopolitical tension, and environmental urgency. In this context, research and innovation are under pressure to deliver, to scale, and to explain their value in more immediate and visible ways. Our anniversary year gave us a timely opportunity to insist on a more demanding standard than speed: relevance, responsibility, and long-term capability. Impact is rarely the result of a single breakthrough. More often, it comes from sustained work, organisations that can endure and renew themselves, partnerships that deepen through trust, and the ability to align ambition with the conditions that make ambition feasible.
Several themes persisted throughout the year, and they will matter for what comes next. One was Europe, as a natural horizon for our ambition and responsibility, expressed in how we build partnerships, stay close to policy debates, and invest in a presence that keeps us connected to the conversations shaping research and innovation. Another was long-term capability, including infrastructures and the institutional conditions that allow excellence to be sustained. A third theme was integration, across subjects, research and innovation, and governance levels, as this is where much of our impact is now made or lost. We also returned repeatedly to the relationship between science and society, and to the role we can play in strengthening that relationship through dialogue, clarity, and a willingness to engage with the public questions that increasingly surround technology and innovation.
From that perspective, 2025 and the horizon ahead into 2026 read as a continuous line of work. We will continue to deepen our European engagement and our contribution to strategic and policy discussions. We will continue to invest in infrastructure and long-term initiatives that outlast individual projects. We will continue to strengthen the connection between excellent research and societal value, including through enhanced innovation pathways and partnerships with industry and public institutions. We will also continue to strengthen the institutional foundations that make this sustainable, through sound governance, capable support services, and steady attention to talent, careers, and the daily conditions in which people perform demanding work.
All of this comes back to people. People who carry projects, teach, supervise, build partnerships, run labs, manage finances, procure equipment, prepare reports, support mobility, organise events, communicate our work, keep buildings and systems operating, and make a large institution feel workable and fair. When things go well, it is rarely the result of individual effort alone. It is the result of judgement exercised in ordinary moments, often quietly, and then carried into collaboration across teams, centres and services: asking for help early enough, making expectations explicit, keeping things moving smoothly between teams, resolving issues before they harden, and treating one another with consideration. This is how we stay effective when the path is not obvious. It is how we keep demanding work humane. It is how a community holds together over time.
And this brings us, naturally, to these last days of the year. After months that were full for many of us, it is good that the calendar insists on a different rhythm. I hope the holiday season gives each of us space that does not need to be justified: time lived without hurry, conversation and conviviality, shared memory, and the personal ways each of us holds and celebrates what matters most with those closest to us.
Warm season’s greetings, and our best wishes for 2026.
By João Claro, Chairman of the Board and CEO of INESC TEC
News, current topics, curiosities and so much more about INESC TEC and its community!
