João Marco Silva, Vítor Francisco Fonte and António Luís Sousa (HASLab)

“HASLab would like to nominate the team in charge of the IDINA project, namely researchers João Marco Silva, Vítor Francisco Fonte and António Luís Sousa (also acting as the coordinator), for winning the IN3+ Award, an initiative promoted by INCM. This acknowledgement is the result of the word carried out by the team in the field of digital identification, which is becoming a promising field concerning HASLab’s research activities, with a clear impact on society”. *

– HASLab coordinators

Given the current context, what were the main challenges for the team?

Although we have been working in the Information Security field for quite some time, the team’s first challenge was to capitalise our diversity in skills and professional experiences within a proposal that focuses on a relatively new topic to us: the production of secure digital documents.

Even after this stage, the complexity and multidisciplinary nature of the issue we set out to address ended up presenting new and motivating challenges. Many of them became key goals of the IDINA proposal, constituting future strategic development efforts and fundamental measures of success.

The teleworking was also a challenge, but the team’s cohesion ensured that this was not an obstacle while carrying out our tasks.

The project recently won the IN3 + Award. How important was this achievement to the team?

The award will help us keep on developing high-quality work in identification systems and the production of secure digital documents. Furthermore, we intend to extend the research to more fundamental aspects of the underlying area, leveraging the work developed within the IDINA’s scope through scientific contributions and collaborations.

What is the main differentiating factor of this project?

I think we cannot reduce the proposal’s differentiating nature to a single factor. Our success at the IN3 + Awards results from a proposal based on the idea that science and innovation should serve as facilitators for improving people’s quality of life. The fact that IDINA combines technical objectives and social impact with the potential to reach a significant portion of the world population must have been an important aspect. In addition, the proposing team has coordinated successful projects in related areas, which demonstrates the capacity to achieve similar results in the challenges associated with IDINA.

How do you comment on this nomination?

Wining this innovation contest is quite satisfying since it represents the recognition of an important entity, the Portuguese Mint and Official Printing Office (INCM), regarding the challenges and contributions we defined as relevant from both technical and social points of view. Moreover, we are aware of our responsibility, and we will do our very best to ensure that all objectives will be accomplished.

* The researcher João Marco Silva was selected as the team’s spokesperson