Organising Committee of the CTM Summer Internships – SCALE project team

Organising Committee of the CTM Summer Internships

“The CTM coordinators would like to nominate the Organising Committee of the CTM Summer Internships 2023: Hélder Fontes, Hugo Manuel Oliveira, Luís Corte-Real, Nuno Paulino and Rúben Queirós. Like the last editions, this initiative featured improvements suggested by the participants of previous sessions, and consolidated the three types of internships: face-to-face, online and hybrid. We would like to congratulate the Organising Committee for the ability to involve the whole Centre in this initiative, which featured a record number of 92 applications this year – mainly thanks to the commitment of the organising team (in close collaboration with SCOM) in the dissemination of the Internships among national and international students. The outstanding organisation of this year’s edition contributed to advance the excellent work carried out in previous editions, reaffirming CTM and INESC TEC’s status among students. Finally, we’d like to thank all the internship advisors and moderators of the final presentation sessions, who greatly contributed to the success of this year’s event. Thank you and congratulations to everyone!”

– CTM coordinators

In your opinion, how important is the promotion of initiatives like the CTM Summer Internships – especially considering the connection between INESC TEC and the academia?

The CTM Summer Internships feature several editions (this year’s was the seventh), with a constant improvement thus far. In our opinion, this shows the relevance of this event among the students, and that the skills and knowledge acquired motivate those who’ve already participated to encourage junior colleagues to join this initiative (or, sometimes, to participate again!). From the Centre’s point of view, the engineering job market is very competitive, easily attracting graduating students. Initiatives like the CTM Summer Internships allow the Centre (and INESC TEC) to streamline their privileged connection with the academia, allowing students to have direct contact with the research environment during their training phase. The relationships between students and researchers during the Summer Internships often lead to future collaborations during ongoing research projects, curricular internships (final year of First Degree), master’s degree theses and even PhDs. During this year’s edition, the CTM Summer Internships were recognised as a First-Degree Curricular Internship (Integrated Project unit) at FEUP, leading many participants to explore this opportunity. Finally, this was the first edition of the CTM Summer Internships focused on internationalisation, with students from six different nationalities.

You rely on the feedback provided by participants from previous editions to improve; do you already have any ideas about the upcoming edition? Which goals do you aim to achieve?

We did consider the feedback from the previous year as the basis for our work. More specifically, we focused on the provision of resources and workspaces, and on the topics covered by advisors and co-advisors to better support the participants – especially considering that the internships are quite short. As to the upcoming edition’s goals, we will explore the results of the satisfaction surveys that the participants submitted. Among the key suggestions mentioned by the 2023 participants, we’d like to highlight more agile application and on-boarding processes, since this year we registered a surprising – yet motivating – large number of participants! In this sense, and in addition to making these processes more agile, we also aim to clarify (during the application stage) the possibility of degree recognition, i.e., Internship – Integrated Project. Finally, and considering our maximum capacity in terms of physical space and supervision, we decided that our ideal number of participants is 40.

What challenged you the most in organising these Internships?

We’d like to highlight two aspects that differ from previous editions: our effort to internationalise the event, and the quantity of theme proposals and applicants. The participation of foreign students also implied streamlining their hybrid participation – during the internship and the final session. The total of 23 themes and 44 participants required increased attention to the grading process to meet their expectations, and an unprecedented coordination of the Open Space, unlike previous editions.

How do you comment on this nomination?

We’re very pleased to have been asked to organise an event that has been quite successful. We’re also very happy with this nomination; it acknowledges the fact that we’ve managed to preserve the quality work carried out by previous organising committees and colleagues.

SCALE project team

“This nomination praises the effort and extraordinary commitment of Everton Alves and the team composed of André Melim, Tiago Hekkert, José Ricardo Andrade, Nuno Soares Fonseca, Jorge Pereira, António Carrapatoso, Olga Klyagina, and Clara Gouveia – namely their success during the SCALE project. The project ended in June and enabled the demonstration of the virtualised protection solution in the test infrastructures for the network protection and automation of INESC TEC’s Laboratory of Smart Grids and Electric Vehicles (SGEV). We’re talking about high-quality and extremely complex work, since it combined hardware and software, constituting an important infrastructure for future CPES projects”.

 – CPES coordinators

This nomination stems from the SCALE project. What type of work did you carry out throughout the project?

The SCALE project is a P2020 project led by EFACEC, featuring ARMIS and IT Aveiro; the main goal is the development of a new centralised solution for the protection and control of the electrical distribution system, which implies the virtualisation of protection devices. The work carried out by INESC TEC team aimed to develop and integrate a set of new advanced applications for automation of the MV network, and to implement the test infrastructure in the SGEV laboratory to validate the complete solution.

“The work constitutes an important infrastructure for future CPES projects” – what opportunities could emerge from your results?

The project allowed the development of a test infrastructure for protection systems and network automation functions, thus increasing the laboratory capacity of the SGEV – through a Hardware In the Loop (HIL) system based on the real-time simulation system to replicate the real conditions of the power grid. This infrastructure is prepared to communicate considering the IEC61850 standard, and is compatible with the latest generation of protection, command and control equipment developed by the industry. We hope to enable new R&D and consulting projects with industrial partners in this area.

What challenged you the most throughout the project?

The implementation of the test infrastructure required new team skills in the development of substation equipment and MV network models, implementation of communication (considering the IEC61850 standard), and integration of all hardware and software, including centralised protection developed within the project. All of this was carried out during the project’s execution period.

How do you comment on this nomination?

It’s extremely gratifying to be nominated as “Incredibles”. It acknowledges the effort and dedication of the entire team, which allowed us to meet the project’s goals! More specifically, the work carried out by Everton, Tiago, and André – who, with the help of the other team members, also faced the challenges of laboratory work (which are many…) with dedication and high spirits!