UNINOVA – Instituto de Desenvolvimento de Novas Tecnologias

UNINOVA - INSTITUTO DE DESENVOLVIMENTO DE NOVAS TECNOLOGIAS (UNI) is a multidisciplinary, independent, and non-profit research institute employing around 180 persons, located in the metropolitan area of Lisbon. It was formed in 1986 by the Faculty of S&T of the Nova University of Lisbon (FCT-UNL - www.fct.unl.pt), a group of industrial associations, a financial holding, and up to 30 companies. It is an active partner of Madan Parque (www.madanparque.pt), a business facilitator and accelerator, incubating Micro and SME’s through several layers of support to entrepreneurial activity.
The main aim of UNINOVA is to pursue excellence in scientific research, technical development, advanced training, and education. By working closely with industry and universities, technological innovations are transferred into profitable business concepts and, existing products further developed to match new industrial requirements. Due to its tight connection with the University and Madan Parque, UNINOVA has, since its foundation, hosted and supported the development several Ph.D. thesis, as well as the creation of several successful spin-offs.
The institute is strongly committed to Europe and
to Lisbon Strategy being involved in many activities that support/enable the developments and actions towards the knowledge economy. It has managed and participated in many national and international research programmes (ESPRIT, BRITE, IMS, IST, ICT, NMP, INNOVA etc.) with experience in RTD in industrial systems interoperability, future internet enterprise systems, reconfigurable manufacturing systems, intelligent control solutions, e-learning and e-training activities, and standards-based activities (e.g. ISO TC184/SC4). UNINOVA also coordinated the IMS SMART-fm framework creating a community (funStep community) with more than 700 members, and also supported the launch of several spin-off companies using research results.
The impact and results achieved through these activities are both on the academic and scientific community, with papers published in chapters of books, international scientific journals, and conferences. These results are also in use by industrial research projects addressing interoperability topics and have been a source for further scientific and technical innovations towards seamlessly interoperable environments. These include standardization communities. The work developed resulted in several international awards.