The ceremony featured presentations by Pedro Antunes, Ricardo Santos, and Pedro Vicente, students competing for the award. The projects were evaluated by a jury of Técnico faculty, including Nuno Lopes, who leads the Compilers course, and David Matos, alongside Pedro Lobo, a software engineer at FuriosaAI, the company sponsoring the event.
Pedro Antunes emerged as the winner with work focused on enhancing capabilities for artificial intelligence application development. His project introduced support for multidimensional data structures, enabling the construction and training of neural networks for handwritten digit recognition, showcasing the language's potential for current computational challenges.
Ricardo Santos proposed improvements to the course's programming language, aiming for greater security and flexibility in data handling. To illustrate these features, he developed a text-based analog clock capable of real-time pointer calculations.
Pedro Vicente, in turn, introduced object-oriented programming concepts, aligning the language with industry-standard practices. His demonstration involved a text-based Tetris game, highlighting the language's capacity to support more complex interactive applications.
Pedro Amaral, Vice-President of the Instituto Superior Técnico for Business Interface, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship, emphasized the significance of these awards in bridging academia and the business sector. "In terms of technical knowledge, Merit Awards are one of our most important tools," he stated, highlighting their role in encouraging companies to connect with students and identify needed skills.
“"It was a pleasure to be here representing the company, and it is a huge pride to sponsor this award. It is especially gratifying to see the work developed in this course that I myself took."
“"The fact that you are here demonstrates your spirit of initiative. These projects highlight the involvement of companies with Técnico and allow us to better understand the challenges the industry faces."
The Merit Award, valued at 2500 euros, was presented to Pedro Antunes, who thanked lecturer Nuno Lopes for his encouragement and FuriosaAI for their support. The prize's donation will also benefit the Computer Engineering Department of the Instituto Superior Técnico, contributing to the improvement of teaching conditions.
