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Impact - Public Policies

FEUP plays an active role in defining the future of society in conjunction with government agencies and/or companies, in favour of technological innovation.

Engineering and Public Policy (EPP) is a well-defined, interdisciplinary field of science, characterised by its own methodology with interactions with the social sciences, and in which an in-depth knowledge of technological issues is a fundamental requirement.

FEUP plays an active role in shaping the future of engineering, whether through partnerships and agreements with government agencies or private sector companies. The desire to develop and implement policies that promote technological innovation and economic growth leads FEUP to collaborate with other universities and research centres in Portugal and abroad, either through joint research projects and/or other open innovation initiatives.

Initiatives

In order to contribute to this development, FEUP has developed a series of actions to improve its own activities, in the form of links with companies, added value and participation in certification and standardisation bodies. However, these actions need to be strengthened and placed in a more ambitious context, with a view to achieving a higher and broader level of recognition and intervention in public opinion.

Among all the initiatives that have been implemented, we would like to highlight the creation in 2011 of the Doctoral Programme in Engineering and Public Policy (PDEPP), the result of a close collaboration with Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU) within the CMU | Portugal programme.

In 2016, a working group produced a report on strengthening participation in public policy, with the aim of "reflecting on a strategy for FEUP to strengthen its visibility in society in general, through greater participation in the construction and debate of public policies and in the organisation/participation in events that disseminate engineering culture in scientific, social and human aspects".

More recently, in 2022, a cycle of Engineering and Public Policy Seminars was launched with the aim of promoting the role of engineering in the political decision-making process and giving it a more central role in the design of public policies. The sessions were coordinated by FEUP staff and external guests, specialists in a particular field, who were asked to speak to specialists in other fields in a language that an informed audience could understand.