A vibrant Digital Media Program will be an important catalyst in Portugal’s transition to an innovation-based economy through (1) facilitating quality research, education, and training related to new media, and (2) accelerating business development and international market access of Portuguese Digital Media products and services. The overall organization of the UT-Austin/Portugal collaboration will support the primary goal of achieving early success while fostering sustainable cooperative activities (Figure 1).

The Digital Media Program will initially be made up of representatives from The University Nova de Lisboa and The University do Porto in Portugal and at UT-Austin the College of Communication (Radio Television Film, School of Journalism); the College of Fine Arts (Theater, Dance, Art, and Music); the IC² Institute; and the Computer Science Department; and the Digital Media Collaboratory (DMC). The goal is to have a single Digital Media Program operating and management structure in Portugal with strong links to UT-Austin. The Digital Media Program will have a Joint Operating Board with four members, namely: the Portuguese Digital Media Program Director (who can be represented by his Co-Director), a representative from the Portuguese Knowledge Agency, the Digital Media Program Director from UT-Austin and the Dean of the College of Communications at UT-Austin.

There will be a CoLab Board of Directors (as discussed in section 5 of this document) to help coordinate all the UT-Austin/Portugal collaborations, including the Digital Media Program. Portuguese and UT-Austin CoLab Directors will be responsible for identifying possible additional areas of intervention and cooperation in education, research, and business development. The Board of Directors will be assisted by a CoLab Operating Committee, with representatives from all the areas.

There will be an External Review Committee composed of Portuguese and international academic, business, and government representatives that will advise the CoLab Governing Board and Digital Media Operating Board. The External Review Committee will be charged with evaluating and providing ongoing recommendations for the programs and activities of the UT-Austin/Portugal Digital Media cooperative programs. Structuring the proposed collaborations for research and education, including the possibility of double Master and PhD degrees, will invoke appropriate legal, governance, and institutional considerations. In terms of business development activities, the institutional framework governing Portuguese academic and for-profit organizations as well as The University of Texas at Austin and U.S. and Portuguese business communities need to be considered and assessed, including legal issues associated with public-private and international S&T collaboration such as intellectual property protection, and reliable and useful metrics for continuous monitoring and evaluation of Digital Media programs and activities.

At UT-Austin, ICES, the Department of Computer Science, the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and TACC will participate in the joint research and education programs on Advanced Computing. The key people include Tinsley Oden, Margarida Jacome, Gustavo de Veciana, Vijay Garg and Keshav Pingali. TACC is engaged in advanced computing R&D, advanced applications and advanced software deployment and operations and key people include Jay Boisseau and Warren Smith.

In Portugal, José Cardoso e Cunha is the key contact person for the coordination of the Advanced Computing Program, and also for the educational and research programs at CS-FCT-UNL. Other key people include Pedro Medeiros, Cecilia Gomes, Vitor Duarte, Joao Lourenco, Paulo Lopes, Hervé Paulino, and Adriano Lopes. Developments in the application and computational science areas will also involve other FCT-UNL faculty from the Computer Science department and other departments. Nuno Correia will also be involved in exploring synergies with advanced computing and digital media.

The Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC) will participates as the policy planning and monitoring agency for the National Grid Initiative. Pedro Ferreira is the key contact person.

At LIP, Gaspar Barreira is the key contact person for the development of applications to use high performance and grid computing and for connection to European advanced projects, such as EGEE.

At LAETA and IDMEC -Institute for Mechanical Engineering, Carlos Mota Soares is the key contact person. At IST-UTL, Luis O. Silva is the key person at the Centre for Plasma Physics, and João Martins is the key person at ICIST - Institute for Structural Engineering, Territory and Construction.

Pedro Alberto and Fernando Nogueira are the key contact people at CFC-UC for applications in the area of Computational Physics.

Luis Silva is the key contact person at DSG-CS-UC for educational and research programs with UT-Austin. Other key people include João Gabriel Silva, Henrique Madeira, Paulo Marques, and Nuno Cunha from CSW.

Alberto Proença is the key contact person at CS-UM for education and R&D in computer science, while Antonio Pina is the key researcher in charge of deployment issues and Rui Ralha is an expert in parallel numerical computation. Other colleagues in CS-UM that conduct research in parallel and advanced computing include Joao Luis Sobral and Luis Paulo Santos. Other relevant CS-UM faculty study formal methods, computer communications, and distributed systems as well as faculty from physics and mathematics departments at UM.

António Sousa Pereira is the key contact person at UA, and Ligia Ribeiro and Fernando Silva are the contact persons at UP.

The Advanced Computing Program is expected to be an important catalyst in Portugal’s transformation to an innovation-based economy through facilitating quality research, education, training, and application. Advanced Computing will have a Joint Operating Board that will have a Director based in Austin and a Director based in Portugal, together with a representative from the Portuguese Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC) and another representative from UT Austin. Both directors will organize and participate in Advanced Computing’s Joint Operating Board. The Joint Operating Board will be responsible for structuring the proposed collaborations for research and education, including the joint PhD degree, and will invoke appropriate legal, governance, and institutional considerations.

The overall organization of the UT-Austin/Portugal collaboration, The International Collaboratory for Emerging Technologies (CoLab), will support the primary goal of achieving measurable success while fostering sustainable cooperative activities. CoLab will work to help coordinate all the UT-Austin/Portugal collaborations including Advanced Computing, Mathematics, Digital Media, and UTEN. Portuguese and UT-Austin CoLab Directors will be responsible for identifying possible additional areas of intervention and cooperation in education, research, and business development. The Board of Directors will be assisted by a CoLab Operating Committee with representatives from all collaborative programs.

There will be an External Review Committee composed of Portuguese and international academic, business, and government representatives that will advise the CoLab Governing Board and program operating boards. The External Review Committee will be charged with evaluating and providing ongoing recommendations for CoLab programs and activities.

A number of the activities of the cooperation program require the specific support of senior faculty and, in particular, the support of ongoing and future research projects involving the interface with other sciences and the use of high performance computing. In these situations, the quality of learning and training is directly related to the enrollment of students and young doctoral researchers in the supporting research projects.

It is therefore mandatory for the success of the overall program to support specific research activities, besides the direct funding of PhD students, post-docs and junior faculty. This is particularly critical for mathematical research heavily dependent on interdisciplinary collaboration and scientific computing, and will play a key role in supplementing the Portuguese funding resources necessary for a true and effective collaboration with UT-Austin.

There are excellent opportunities for cross-fertilization of ideas between UT-Austin and the Portuguese university and research groups, in several areas of applied mathematics and computational science, in particular in the modeling of complex systems and phenomena and their subsequent analysis, simulation and optimization. The resulting models pose extremely difficult mathematical problems due to their inherent complexity and nonlinearity, the appearance of singularities, or an intrinsic stochastic nature. Moreover, their computational solution results in challenging problems involving large scale PDE simulations, irregular domains and interfaces, noise and uncertainty in data, scarce information for optimization, or hard combinatorial structures.

Many of these problems have significant societal and scientific importance, such as parameter estimation for global climate change and astrophysics modeling, optimal design of the next generation linear accelerator, optimal control of the next generation plasma fusion device, optimal configuration of clusters and nanostructures, analysis and design of smart materials and structures.

In all of these areas, there is a great opportunity to leverage the strengths of the groups in Portugal involved and UT-Austin to address these problems with better prepared teams and, simultaneously, to engage training at the highest level. The Department and Center of Mathematics of the University of Coimbra are particularly interested in pursuing this activity under the advanced and high performance computing cooperation program, in collaboration with the other UC Departments involved (Physics and Computer Science) and the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences of The University of Texas at Austin.

To begin the coordination of activities for the coming five year period, it is proposed that a Scientific Committee for the Programmatic Area of Mathematics: Analysis, Modeling, Optimization and Simulation be formed. The committee would consist of Efraim Armendariz, Luis Caffarelli, Bjorn Engquist, Irene Gamba, Omar Ghattas, (liaison to other Portugal-U.S. programs), Keshav Pingali (liaison to the Advanced Programmatic Area). Portuguese mathematicians include Rui Loja Fernandes (ISTUTL), Diogo Gomes (ISTUTL), Luísa Mascarenhas ( FCTUNL), Manuel Margues (FCUL), José Francisco Rodrigues (FCUL), Luis Nunes Vicente (UC) as well as Luís Trabucho (UCUL), Jose Miguel Urbano (UC), and Jean Claude Zambrini (FCUL). The joint Scientific Committee will work towards the development of interactions in research areas of common interest, the formal establishment of a joint training program for graduate students and postdoctoral associates involving senior faculty, and the pursuit of funding opportunities.

The core already exists in UT-Austin’s Department of Mathematics that will contributing the available human resources to coordinate and develop a program that will bring together the already existing centers including those with greater emphasis on the applied/applicable side. The modeling component by Mathematics Department members includes Irene Gamba, Oscar Gonzalez, and Thaleia Zariphopoulou. Faculty members involved in scientific computation include Todd Arbogast, Bjorn Engquist, Felipe Voloch, Richard Tsai and Lexing Ying. Faculty members William Beckner, Luis Caffarelli, Takis Souganidis, Mikhail Vishik, and Rafael de la Llave represent analysis with applications involving nonlinear phenomena.

The Mathematics Department maintains an extensive advanced curriculum, including about fifty graduate courses a year, the mentoring of one hundred Ph D students who graduate at a rate of eighteen a year, and about eighteen postdoctoral fellows that come to UT-Austin for a three year period.

As a starting point to develop joint areas of interest we suggest a series of workshops to find common areas of interest and shared expertise. The workshops will bring together senior and junior scientists, emphasize current research and will provide prospective graduate students with a perspective of the opportunities and activities afforded by the exchange program as well as putting them in contact with prospective advisors.

The workshops will focus on emphasizing the development and application of areas of mathematics in which there has been increasing usage in science, engineering, finance and economics. An example of the type of workshop is in the area of nonlinear differential equations and simulation. This workshop would bring together interacting groups from the different divisions of participating institutions with a common interest in the mathematical sciences.

An important component of the workshops consists of incorporating the expertise present in mathematics as well as other disciplines; the Mathematics Department has strong working relationships with members of other Schools/Departments, such as Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Engineering, Economics, MSIS and Finance. These ties will augment and enhance the quality and content of workshops. Given the already existing interest in these subjects for a larger mathematical input, the cooperation basis will enlarge considerably, especially if there is an organized and coordinated effort through the auspices of ICES.

The Mathematics Program is expected to be an important catalyst in Portugal’s transformation to an innovation-based economy through facilitating quality research, education, and training. There will be a Mathematics Program Director based in Austin and a Director based in Portugal. Both directors will organize and participate in the Mathematics Joint Operating Board, which will include two other representatives from Portugal and from UT Austin. The Joint Operating Board will be assisted by the Scientific Committee for Mathematics, which will include representatives from the participating programs at UT-Austin and in Portugal (Figure 4). The Joint Operating Board will be responsible for structuring the proposed collaborations for research and education, including the PhD degree, and will invoke appropriate legal, governance, and institutional considerations.

The overall organization of the UT-Austin/Portugal collaboration, Collaborative Laboratory in Emerging Technology (CoLab), will support the primary goal of achieving measurable success while fostering sustainable cooperative activities. The CoLab Board of Directors will help coordinate all the UT-Austin/Portugal collaborations including Mathematics, Advanced Computing, Digital Media, and UTEN. Portuguese and UT-Austin CoLab Directors will be responsible for identifying possible additional areas of intervention and cooperation in education, research, and business development. The Board of Directors will be assisted by an Operating Committee, with representatives from all areas.

There will be an External Review Committee composed of Portuguese and international academic, business, and government representatives. The External Review Committee will be charged with providing ongoing recommendations for the programs and activities of the UT-Austin/Portugal Mathematics cooperative programs.

A key UTEN program goal is to be an important catalyst in Portugal’s transformation to an innovation-based economy through (1) accelerating commercialization and international market access of Portuguese S&T, and (2) facilitating quality research, education, and training related to S&T commercialization. Accordingly a main objective of UTEN governance is to minimize obstacles while maximizing successful outputs. The overall organization of the UT-Austin/Portugal collaboration will work to keep bureaucratic procedures to a minimum, with the primary goal of achieving early successes while fostering sustainable cooperative activities.

The CoLab Board of Directors will assist with coordination of all UT-Austin/Portugal collaborative programs. CoLab directors from UT-Austin and Portugal will be responsible for assisting UTEN programs and activities and for identifying and fostering additional links among select national and global institutions and industry (see Figure 5). There will be an External Review Committee (ERC) that will report to the CoLab Board of Directors. The External Review Committee will be charged with evaluating on-going UTEN programs and activities and providing recommendations for enhanced effectiveness.

UTEN will have a Joint Operating Board, which will report to the CoLab Governing Board. There will be a UTEN Director based in Austin and a Director and a co-Director based in Portugal. Both directors and the Portuguese Co-Director will organize and participate in UTEN´s Joint Operating Board which will include the Director of the Portuguese Innovation Agency, AdI, and the Director of the Austin Technology Incubator, ATI. The Operating Board will be chaired by the UTEN Director in Portugal.

UTEN Portugal will initially be made up of representatives from the 15 Portuguese universities with the goal of achieving a single operating and management structure achieved through the Portuguese Innovation Agency, AdI. In this context, AdI will provide the national secretariat for UTEN@Portugal and will facilitate all the necessary coordination tasks among the various parts in Portugal. UTEN@Austin will be initially composed of IC² Institute programs including the Austin Technology Incubator (ATI), Commercialization Programs, MS in Science and Technology Commercialization (MSSTC), and the Bureau of Business Research as well as UTA’s Office of Technology Commercialization. UTEN will also have an Industry Affiliates and Internship Program that will be directed by UTEN’s Directors (Figure 5).

The planning for year 1 includes three main objectives:

1. Competitive Selection for US and Global Markets of: i) Technology-based projects at Portuguese universities and research centers; and ii) Existing technology-based Portuguese businesses.
   • Promotion, March-April 2007:
     • Promotion and invitations to Portuguese (1) faculty, students, technology transfer officers, entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs, and research centers, and (2) small and mid-sized businesses to participate in national S&T business competitions to be held in Portugal May-July 2007 leading to competitive selection for accelerated US and International Market Access;
     • Technology and Business Team Workshops, Selections, and Mentoring in Portugal for business plan competitions;
   • Competitive Selections, April-August 2007:
     • S&T evaluation for international markets: Workshops and competitive selections in Portugal of select Portuguese (1) S&T from universities and research centers, and (2) small businesses. The objective is to select best candidates for regional and national S&T business competitions in Portugal leading to US and international market access;
     • National S&T Business Competition in Portugal.
2. Technology Fellowship and Intern Program:
   • Training conducted by UTAustin personnel in collaboration with Portuguese partners
   • Internships and Fellowships: Competitively selected participants from the UTEN Training Program will receive funded Technology Commercialization Fellowships and Internships in Austin and possibly other US and global institutions.
3. Monitoring UTEN processes for continuos observation of science and technology commercialization:
   • Establish Metrics for and collect data on UTEN activities and programs;
   • Develop case studies.