Ensure the infrastructure needed for a Research Mathematics Department:
library, Department building (offices, seminar rooms, Commons Room, secretariat), computer servers and communication network, personal computers, access to bibliographic data bases

In 1983, the Mathematics Department "library" fitted in one small Olaio furniture piece in Professor Campos Ferreira office. The Department had a very small number of offices (approximately 10) scattered in different buildings and scatterd sites in the Pavilhão Central (this had not been a serious problem for a only teaching service Department for 1st and 2nd year courses to IST Engineering degree programs, and with teaching staff mostly Teaching Assistants many of them engineers working part-time at IST and with professional activities outside), and a lecture room that had been recently provided for the Master in Applied Mathematics courses, which was beginning in 1983/84. The Department did not have any computer equipment at all.

The idea in the 1983 draft Strategic Plan for ensuring an initial library appropriate for a starting Teaching and Research Mathematics Department, was to seek the sympathy of the Calouste Gulkbenkian Foundation to donate to the IST Mathematics Department its library of the former IGC Center of Scientific Computing, which had been discontinued. That idea came about because this library was well-known to Luis Magalhães, and also to Manuel Ricou and Carlos Rocha, since, while Research Assistants at the IGC Laboratory of Physiology they became the most intense users of this library and gathered a detailed knowledge of its collection. This was an unusually good collection of Mathematics monographies paitionatelly assembled throughout time by some of the permanet reserchers of the IGC Center of Scientific Computing. To achive this, Luis Magalhães and Manuel Ricou wrote a carefully crafted letter to the President of the Caloute Gulbenkian Foundation, Dr. José Azeredo Perdigão, pledging the donation of that library to the IST mathematics Department and suggesting that in this way the Foundation could best contribute to the development of Mathematics and the advanced training of young mathematicians, and sought for this initiative, in a face-to-face meeting, the support of the then "Reitor" of the Technical University of Lisbon, Professor Eduardo Arantes e Oliveira, who immediately offered to do his best to support the initiative.

The answer of Dr. José Azeredo Perdigão came quickly and was unconditionally positive, and the donation proceeded swiftly with the installation of the library in a former classroom next to the Master of Applied Mathematics lecture room and the Department Secretariat in the IST "Pavilhão Central", and was officialized in a cerimony held at IST in the "Sala de Reuniões do Conselho Científico" with the IST President (Diamantino Durão), the President of the Mathematics Department (Filipe Romeiras) and Dr. José Azeredo Perdigão, who delievered an entusiastic inspirational speech, followed by a visit to the new library. By the terms of the agreement signed with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, which had been drafted in collaboration of Luis Magalhães and Manuel Ricou with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation services and the Chair of the IST Mathematics Department, was owned by the IST Mathematics Department and not directly by the IST. In one quick stroke, the IST Mathematics Department passed from the almost inexistence of a library to own one of the best Mathematics monographies libraries in Portugal.

Following this, the Mathematics Department assigned part of its budget to expand in every year the library with new books, selected from lists proposed by the Depatment faculty.

This library, was after some years moved to the IST Central Library rooms, which had been modernized after most of the Central Library collection was moved to new IST Engineering Department buildings, liberating space to build several offices for Mathematics Department teaching staff. As the IST Central Library had been deployed of books, they were eager to accept hosting the Mathematics Department Library. Besides the freed space, the Mathematics Department benefited from the services of the Central Library to manage the access and lending of books to professors and students. Still later, it was moved to the Complexo Interdisciplar building library, also managed by the IST Central Library, and in a building next to the Mathematics Building, since the move of a Chamistry library to a new Chemical Engineering Department building (IST South Tower) left ample empty space.

It was still necessary to ensure a reasonable collection of Mathematics journals, what began 4 years later with two projects for 1988-90, one led by Luis Magalhães and the other by Carlos Rocha, but more decisively by two science infrastructure projects submitted for 1990-93 to the CIENCIA Program, one focused on Mathematics led by Luis Magalhães, and the other for the creation of the ISR – Institute of Systems and Robotics, led at IST by João Sentieiro (of the IST Departrment of Electrical and Computer Engineering (DEEC)), Luis Magalhães (of the IST Mathematics Department) and Isabel Ribeiro (of the IST DEEC), along with Aníbal Traça de Almeida of U. of Coimbra and Jorge Martins de Carvalho of U. of Porto, all approved for funding.

To support the infrastructure projects the Research Group on Differential Equations, Dynamical Systems, Geometry and Topology was split in two, with slightly over 20 Research Group members in each one, and Luis Magalhães in both. This Resarch Group members in the ISR-Lisbon project accounted for slightly more than 1/3 of the ISR-Lisbon team, what was essential to ensure the needed critical mass to this proposal. The Mathematics project was funded equivalent to 1/2 million euros (the currency then was Escudos) an the ISR-Lisbon project was funded with 2 million euros (1/3 of which corresponding to the Research Group of the IST Mathematics Department). Just with these two infrastructure CIENCIA projects this Research Group obtained for IST a funding equivalent to about 1.2 million euros at current prices of 1990, corresponding to the purchasing power of more than 2.2 million euros in 2026 (comparing favourably with funding levels of now-a-days ERC grants).

In 1994, Luis Magalhães, then Chair of the IST Mathematics Department, negotiated with the the IST President, Diamantino Durão, the allocation of the the IST Mathematics Department in the Mathematics Building were it stands since then, allowing to group the scarce Department offices scattered in disconnected spaces of the Pavilhão Central and the Complexo Interdisciplinar I building, to greatly expand office space so it could accommodate offices for about 100 faculty and also visiting researchers, PhD students and Post-Doc fellows, a nice Mathematics Journals library on the main research topics of the Department, Seminar rooms, a computer laboratories for students, rooms for attending to students on questions they needed to clarify with teachers openned almost full-time, an ample space for the Secretariat, space for a Commons Room were faculty could naturaçlly meet and discuss while taking coffee or picking up mail, and a large nice room with high exterior visibility at the building entrance for Sala de Estudo da LMAC for students of the undergraduate IST Mathematics Program (LMAC), which was then a clear material expression of the care the IST Department dedicated to students and teaching.

The initiative of opening a Sala de Estudo da LMAC for students was the first in all IST undergraduate programs, who gradually followed on this example.

At the time the IST Mathematics Department finantial resources were not enough for setting up a high level large Commons Room, but space was reserved for it with joining the initial improvised Commons Room were the Department mail boxes were located with a meeting room to which it was connected by a large amovable door that allow then for a special academic events large room. The Commons Room was only well provided, in the space that had bee reserved by Luis Magalhães, when Francisco Teixeira was the Department Chair, who did an excellent job in creating a practical and comfortable space which also had small boards where people could scrible while discussing Mathematics. This was also the first initiative of creation of a nice Commons Room in IST Departments, an example that was later followed by other departments, although the mathematics Commons Room remains to date the best such facility in the IST Departments.

The attribution of the building to the IST Mathematics Department could only be achieved due to the funds obtained to IST by two science infractructe CIENCIA Program projects, one in Mathematics led by Luis Magalhães, and the other led jointly by him together with João Sentieiro and Isabel Ribeiro, both of CAPS and the IST DEEC, for the creation of the ISR – Institute of Systems and Robotics supported at IST by a research team involving DEEC faculty and part of the Research Group on Differential Equation, Dynamical Systems, Geometry and Topology, which was split in two to support the two projects. The ISR project included substantial funding for building construction at IST which contributed to build the IST North Tower together with funds of another CIENCIA project for the creation of the IT - Institute of Telecommunications submitted by a fully DEEC research team. It was the share of Research Group on Mathematics in the attraction of funding for buildings in the ISR project that allowed Luis Magalhães to negotate with the IST President the Mathematics Building.

The two infrastructure projects funded by the CIENCIA Program allowed to acquire computer equipment, to install in the new Mathematics Building a computer communication network both for internal an external connectivity, and to buy Mathematics journals subscriptions, including some back issues, which, together with Mathematics Journals that were being subscribed through the IST Central Library, made for a nice library of Mathematics Journals on the Department research areas. Those projects also allowed to subscribe the data base MathSciNet, which was then made available to all IST faculty and students. Similarly as for books, the Mathematics Department assigned part of its yearly budget to maintain the subscriptions, and sometimes to expand them a bit. The Mathematics Department computer and communication network infrastructure was led by João Palhoto Matos, who since then (and up to when this text was written in July 2026) rendered high service to the Department in those areas and in ensuring neat departmental web pages.