Secure external funding for research infrastructure, research projects, PhD students and post-doctors

The importance of obtaining external funding to secure resources to fund young researchers (PhD students, post-docs, students being initiated to research), to lighten the teaching load of professors to increase the time they can dedicate to research, to pay for inviting research visitors for learning about their work and/or research collaborations, to fund research missions to other universities or research centers with the same objectives, to finance reserch conferences with the same objectives, to acquire needed equipment or access to bibliographic or data resources (journals, books, data bases), to fund research facilities when office or lab space is needed to sustain and expand activities. All of these are required for a flourishing research environment.

In 1986, Luis Magalhães with Manuel Ricou and Jorge Dias de Deus (of the IST Physics Department) took the initiative of proposing to the National Board of Scientific and Technological Research (JNICT) an unrequested Program for Support of Research Groups in Applied Mathematics "Programa de Apoio a Núcleos de Investigação em Matemática Aplicada" (ANIMA), aimed at introducing in Portugal research stimulus instruments similar to those of one of the first institutes on Mathematics created by the USA NSF - National Science Foundation in 1982, namely the IMA - Institute for Mathematics and Its Applications at U. of Minnesota, where I was a Research Fellow in the first year of the Institute operation
. Although unfortunately not approved, delaying the development of Mathematics in Portugal, this proposal was crucial for opening the support of Mathematics research by the JNICT, what had not happened before, in particular by the Science and Technology Mobilization Program launched by JNICT in 1987. Besides, some of the recommendations of the proposal were incorporated into Government resolutions on the general orientation of scientific research decided in 1987.

In 1987-89, Luis Magalhães with José Basto Gonçalves (of the Faculty of Sciences of U. of Porto) and Eduardo Borges Pires (of the IST Department of Civil Engineering) insisted on a new unrequested proposal to JNICT for a Dynamization Program of Applied Mathematical Analysis, based on a modification of the previous Program ANIMA proposal. This proposal went a lot further. It was publicly discussed at the National Scientific and Technological Research Days organized by JNICT in 1987 in all areas of Science, aiming at mobilizing the Portuguese Research Community to get involved in setting up a national Research Policy Agenda at a time that Scientific Research was insepient in Portugal. The Program was approved by the President of JNICT, José Mariano Gago, in 1989, with an initial budget and Luis Magalhães appointed to Program Director. However, shortly after, a new JNICT President was appointed, Carlos Salema, who decided to cancel the Program before it could start. This considerably delayed again the development of Mathematics in Portugal and made clear that were required other initiatives to address the lack of the instruments it envisioned.

In 1988/89 one research project led by Luis Magalhães on Asymptotic Behavior of Infinite Dimensional Dynamical Systems and one other project led by Carlos Rocha on Bifurcations in Attractors of Dissipative Systems were submitted to the National Board of Scientific and Technological Research (JNICT) where approved for funding for 1998-90
. These were the first research projects in Mathematics with Governmental funding in Portugal. They were followed by a sequence of externally funded research projects led by an increasing number of members of the Research Group created at IST on Differential Equations, Dynamical Systems, Geometry and Topology, and they also were an example for other IST Mathematics Department faculty to seek external funding for research projects, and also to mathematics Departments of other universities.

In 1990/91 Luis Magalhães led the creation of the Center for Mathematical Analysis, Dynamical Systems and Applications to Engineering with a team formed by part of the Research Group created on these fields in 1985 and submitted a project for its infrastructural funding to the CIENCIA Program, managed by JNICT and oriented to fund science infrastructures. This project was approved for funding with the equivalent to 1/2 million Euros at the time (the currency then was Escudos) and allowed to equip the Center members with personal computers, to build a Ethernet network providing internal and external computer connectivity, and to subscribe research journals and buy back issues, assuring a nice reserach library in the considered fields. At the time Luis Magalhães insisted that another project be submitted to the same program by another team of the IST mathematics Department and helped to prepare another appilcation led by António Ferreira dos Santos which was also approved and contributed to the IST Mathematics Department infrastructure. This proved to be a good decision since it allowed to attract more external funding deom that program than would be possible with a unified application.

Also in 1990/91, Luis Magalhães joined João Sentieiro and Isabel Ribeiro, both of CAPS and the IST Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (DEEC), in jointly leading a proposal for the creation of the ISR – Institute of Systems and Robotics, also sibmitted to the CIENCIA Program, and also for a period of three years. This institute proposal also involved a team of the Faculty of Science and Technology of U. of Coimbra led by Aníbal Traça de Almeida and a team of the Faculty of Engineering of the U. of Porto led by Jorge Martins de Carvalho. This was a much more ambitious venture, due its national character and dimension, that required a strenuous strategic and coordination effort of João Sentieiro and Luis Magalhães, but which, despite its complexity, succeeded brilliantly on being approved with for funding.

In 1992/93, two other Research projects led by the Research Group members, one by Carlos Rocha Methods of Nonlinear Analysis and the other by José Manuel Ferreira Algebrai Methods in Discrete Dynamics Geometry, were funded by the STRIDE Program managed by JNICT. Luis Magalhães did not want to lead a proposal for this call since he had been nominated Member of the Coordination Committee of Exact and Natural Sciences of JNICT for 1992-94.

After this, the CAMGSD members returning with PhDs taken abroad were encouraged to also submit projects for external funding.

In 1995-97 the CAMGSD members had ongoing the following research projects funded by JNICT some of them with support of the PRAXIS XXI Program:

• Nonlinear Analysis and Dynamical Systems, submitted in 1994 and led by Luis Magalhães with research team Waldyr Oliva, Carlos Rocha, José Manuel Ferreira, Pedro Gonçalves Henriques, Luisa Ribeiro, João Palhoto Matos, Fernando Pestana da Costa, Pedro Girão, José Matias, Rui Loja Fernandes, Pedro Freitas, João Teixeira Pinto, Esmeralda Dias, Jorge Buescu, Gabriel Pires, Ana Cannas da Silva, Miguel Abreu, Luis Barreira, and their students.
• Geometric and Topological Methods in Low Dimension and in Infinite Dimension submitted in 1994 and led by José Sousa Ramos and with reserach team Paulo Almeida, Michael Paluch, José Luis Fachada, and their students.
• Geometric and Topological Methods in Hamiltonian Systems and Ergodic Theory submitted in 1995 and led by Rui Loja Fernandes with research team with Esmeralda Dias, Jorge Buescu, Pedro Miguel Duarte, Luis Barreira, Ana Canas da Silva, Miguel Abreu, and their students.
• Phase Transitions and Partial Differential Equations submitted in 1995 and led by Fernando Pestana da Costa with research team Pedro Girão, Pedro Freitas, José Matias, João Teixeira Pinto, Gabriel Pires, and their students.
• Geometry and Topology of Moduli Spaces submitted in 1996 and led by Ana Cannas da Silva with Rui Loja Fernandes, Miguel Abreu, Carlos Florentino, and their students.
• Qualitative Theory of Functional Equations, Systems of Functional Equations and Systems of Partial Differential Equations submitted in 1996 and led by Pedro freitas with José Manuel Ferreira, and their students.
• Combinatorial and Discrete Differential Manifolds submitted in 1996 and led by Raul Cordovil with José Sousa Ramos, Paulo Almeida, Michael Paluch, Pedro Duarte, and their students.

Besides, some small international bilateral projects supporting scientific ex-change were submitted by CAMGSD members to INIC or JNICT and were funded:

• Qualitative Theory of Dynamical Systems, Agreement CNR(Italy)-INIC(Portugal), led by Luis Magalhães Portugal) and Georgio Fusco (Italy), 1989-91.
• Dynamics of Phase Transitions in Systems of Interacting Particles, INIDA-Germany, Led by Fernando Pestana da Costa, 1994/95.
• Topics in Dynamical Systems, Dimension Theory, and Multifractal Rigidity, NATO Collaborative Research Grant Programme, led by Luís Barreira (Portugal) and Yakov Pesin (USA) (1997-2000).

The attraction of funds by research projects submitted by the CAMGSD members pursued in the following years.