Today, we share an interview with Luís Caldas de Oliveira, a faculty member of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (DEEC) and the coordinator of the First-Cycle Integrative Project (PIC1) of the Bachelor's Degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering (LEEC). Over the past few years, Professor Caldas de Oliveira has focused his interests on innovation and entrepreneurship.

Throughout his career, he has been involved in several areas of electrical and computer engineering, leading the development of European Portuguese speech synthesis systems for people with special needs. He also supervised the development of a text prediction writing accelerator designed to facilitate computer use by people with cerebral palsy. His interest in innovation led António Cruz Serra (President of Técnico from 2009 to 2012) to invite him, in 2009, to join the School's Management Board. That same year, Luís Caldas de Oliveira was entrusted with developing the Technology Transfer Office (TT), as the School did not yet have a dedicated structure to transfer knowledge to society. In this role, he promoted several initiatives aimed at addressing this gap. "We started with the management of intellectual property," the professor recalls. Although regulations for the registration and protection of intellectual property already existed, they were revised with a stronger focus on the valorisation and commercialisation of the technologies developed at Técnico.

Subsequently, the Career Services and the Corporate Partners Network were also established, reinforcing Técnico's connection with society. Today, the network includes 26 partner companies.

One of the ways we can maximise the value of the technologies developed at Técnico is by transferring them to companies, but another possibility is for their creators to bring them to the market themselves. (...) This is the most effective way for technology to generate value, particularly when it is highly sophisticated and at the forefront of knowledge.

Luís Caldas de Oliveira, Coordinator of the ElectroCap programme

Driven by his interest in creating initiatives that foster innovation and entrepreneurship within the academic community, Professor Caldas de Oliveira completed several specialised courses in the field. He attended a programme at Babson University and the Lean LaunchPad course led by Steve Blank, where he learned the importance of maintaining close contact with users throughout the development of innovations capable of creating value for society.

Believing that the best way to learn is through teaching, Luís Caldas de Oliveira expanded his teaching activities by introducing several entrepreneurship-related courses, including the one he currently teaches in the Master's Degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering. His goal has been to equip students with entrepreneurial skills, covering topics such as the development of innovative products and services, value proposition design, partnerships, customer segmentation, customer relationship management, communication channels, and the preparation of a three-year financial plan, including project valuation, cost estimation, investment requirements, revenue projections, and investor returns.

The professor was also involved in the creation of programmes such as Lab2Market@Técnico, an initiative created by António Brandão Vasconcelos to promote the valorisation of technologies developed at Técnico with the potential to solve societal challenges, and E.Awards@Técnico, which showcases innovative projects developed by students enrolled in the School's Entrepreneurship and Innovation courses. "Very few people are able to fully understand the potential of a new technology. Its creators are the people best equipped to do so," he explains.

The definition of innovation that I like most is the one that compares it with research: research uses money to create knowledge, whereas innovation uses knowledge to create money—in the sense of creating value.

Luís Caldas de Oliveira, Coordinator of the ElectroCap programme

"What I consider most important is innovation," emphasises Luís Caldas de Oliveira. He argues that innovation goes beyond entrepreneurship, a principle illustrated by the ElectroCap programme. ElectroCap is the integrative project undertaken by final-year students of Técnico's Bachelor's Degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering, introduced following the curriculum reform in 2023. "The objective of ElectroCap is to carry out a crucial step in the innovation process: determining whether the solution we are developing for a given problem has a real chance of addressing the underlying need. (...) Entrepreneurship is not our goal. Innovation is needed everywhere," he concludes.

During the final semester of the bachelor's degree, students are challenged to develop innovative solutions to real-world problems, placing potential users at the centre of the process. "In the first stage, I always tell my students that they need to talk to people face to face. They need to see their pupils dilate. If they cannot see genuine interest in the eyes of the person experiencing the problem, then they are not proposing the right solution," he explains. After identifying, structuring, and analysing the problem, students develop a functional prototype, enabling them to collect metrics that demonstrate the real-world impact of their projects.

The goal of the programme is to ensure that students are able to integrate the knowledge acquired throughout their bachelor's degree into a single project.

Luís Caldas de Oliveira, Coordinator of the ElectroCap programme

Through this integrative project, students are free to develop solutions for a wide range of sectors. It is the only bachelor's programme at Técnico in which final-year students are invited to define their own challenge, rather than working on topics proposed by faculty members or companies. This year, projects included a prototype designed to help prevent heatstroke in construction workers by monitoring skin temperature and heart rate; a satellite image analysis system for monitoring crop development in agricultural fields; and a functional model capable of monitoring the concrete curing process, helping to minimise failures in infrastructure construction.

Every year, these projects are presented to the public at the ElectroDay, an event that showcases the skills acquired by students completing the Bachelor's Degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering. It also provides primary and secondary school students with the opportunity to discover, in practice, what electrical and computer engineering is all about.

What really matters is that people recognise that knowledge is essential.

Luís Caldas de Oliveira, Coordinator of the ElectroCap programme

When asked what message he would like to share with students joining the Bachelor's Degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering next academic year, Professor Caldas de Oliveira emphasises the importance of remaining curious, as curiosity provides the resilience needed to successfully complete the programme. Although studying at Técnico is demanding, he stresses that meaningful learning requires effort. While large language models can provide answers that appear straightforward, genuine learning only happens when students make the effort to understand those answers. Society will continue to need knowledgeable professionals, as these tools cannot replace the value of human interaction and critical thinking.

In conclusion, Luís Caldas de Oliveira notes that, although engineering education is still largely based on objective assessment through exams and tests, evaluating the development of a project is inherently subjective and is not always fully understood by students. Nevertheless, he highlights the importance of this type of assessment, which exposes students to real-world challenges and prepares them both for the job market and for further academic studies.

We need to change the mindset of the students who join us. (...) In innovation, there is never just one way to solve a problem.

Luís Caldas de Oliveira, Coordinator of the ElectroCap programme