Create a Post-Doctoral Program of international relevance

This program of the Center of Mathematical Analysis, Geometry and Dynamical Systems was designed in 1996-97 by Luis Magalhães, as the Center Coordinator, aiming to initiate it in 1998. An international competition was planned to close at the beginning of each year for candidates to enter in the beginning of the following academic year, based on 2 to 4 grants offered annually supported by the Center budget, with the idea that the admitted candidates would apply for subsequent extra years (at maximum 3 extra years) to the national FCT Post-Doctoral grant program and further financial resources would come from the external funded research projects led by the Center members or from Europena Union programs.

The program was launched in 1998, with two Post-Docs and grew gradually. The number of applications received was large from the beginning, starting at around 60 and growing to over 100, from candidates that included a high-level group far exceeding the vacancies and who were receiving or finishing doctoral degrees at several of the world best universities. In 2002, the Program had 9 Post-Docs, between 2003 and 2005 it had 12 to 16, and in 2006-12 it had an average of 21 Post-Docs per year. Since 1998, the program had in 2012 a cumulative total of 78 Post-Docs, with an average length of stay at the Center of 2.9 years.

Of the 78 Post-Docs the Center had in 1998-2012, 65 were foreigners and

• 43 obtained their PhDs in 14 European countries other than Portugal (11 in France, 10 in the United Kingdom, 5 in the Netherlands, 4 in Italy, 2 in each one of Germany, Poland and Switzerland, and 1 in each one of Austria, Slovakia, Spain, Greece, Hungary, Russia and Sweden),
• 21 obtained their PhDs in North America (19 in the USA and 2 in Canada),
• 7 obtained their PhDs in South America (5 in Brazil and 2 in Argentina),
• 1 obtained their PhDs in Asia (China),
• 5 obtained their PhDs in Portugal.

The Post-Docs obtained their PhDs at 61 universities:

• 4 at IST-Technical University of Lisbon-IST;
• 3 at MIT and at IMPA;
• 2 at: U. of Cambridge, U. of California-Riverside, U. of Maryland, U. of Warwick, U. of Nottingham, U. of Montpellier, U. of Strasbourg, U. of Toulon and Var, U. of Nijmegen, Silesian U.;
• 1 at: Brown U., Carnegie-Mellon U., Columbia U., Cornell U., Dartmouth College, Georgia Tech, Penn State U., Stanford U., U. of California-Berkeley, U. of Colorado-Boulder, U. of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, U. of Minnesota, U. of Texas-Austin, U. of Montreal, U. of Québec-Montreal, CEA Paris-Saclay, U. of Angers, U. Claude-Bernard, U. Paul Cézanne, U. Pierre et Marie Curie, Heriot-Watt U., U. of Edinburgh, Imperial College London, U. of Sheffield, U. of Bologna, U. of Padova, U, of Roma-Tor Vergata, SISSA, EPF Lausanne, U. of Zurich, TU Dresden, TU Munich, U. of Amsterdam, Utrecht U., Comenius U., KTH Royal Institute of Technology, TU Budapest, U. of Barcelona, U. of Crete, UT Vienna, Independent U. Moscow, South China U. of Technology (Guangzhou), U. of São Paulo, UF Rio Grande do Sul, U. of Buenos Aires, U. Nacional de la Plata, U. of Algarve, U. of Lisbon.

In 2000, this Post-Doctoral Program gained visible recognition in the international mathematics research community. It obviously was one of the strongest Post-Doctoral Programs in Mathematics worldwide.

This was the first regular Post-Doc Program launched at IST and it took a while for a few other IST Research Units to follow on this example. Besides, it was one of the strongest Post-Doc programs in Portugal in all areas of Science, which only began to have some relevance in other national R&D Units following the FCT policy, when Luis Magalhães was FCT President, of providing funds for R&D Units to finance Post-Docs with the creation by FCT of 15 Associate laboratories (involving more than 30 R&D Units) in 2000-02 and following the international evaluations of R&D Units launched by FCT in 1999 and 2002.