Aerospace Week once again promotes contact between academia and industry
Between February 23 and 27, the central pavilion of the Alameda campus once again hosted Aerospace Week, organized by students from the programme. The event featured a career fair, several workshops, and talks.
The opening ceremony included the participation of Dinis Costa, the event’s lead organizer, who reinforced the commitment to strengthening ties with industry. The session also featured speeches by Jorge Morgado, Vice President for Quality, Planning and Operations, and Fernando Lau, a faculty member at Técnico.
On Wednesday, two workshops on PCB design and soldering were held, organized in partnership with DEEC and the Instituto de Telecomunicações. Both sessions were led by Ricardo Lameirinhas, a DEEC faculty member, Eduardo Caria, an Electronics Engineering student, and Duarte Diamantino, a student in Electrical and Computer Engineering. During these workshops, participants explored the differences between several PCB design tools, including KiCad.
Throughout the workshops, participants designed their own circuits and learned which information and files are required to manufacture them on printed circuit boards. They were then challenged to solder the circuits, which included connecting a battery and an LED.
On the same day, João Paulo Monteiro, a DEEC faculty member and researcher at IST NanosatLab, presented the history of ISTSat-1 in the talk “ISTSat-1: Técnico's Satellite, 18 Months in Orbit.” He addressed the main challenges involved in building ISTSat-1, discussing the satellite’s structure, assembly process, and the tests carried out, including system performance under conditions such as energy management, vibration, and exposure to space radiation.
Throughout Aerospace Week, several talks were also delivered by alumni from Electrical and Computer Engineering and Aerospace Engineering, who shared different perspectives on the industry, internships, the transition to the job market, mobility experiences, and sector challenges. The sessions included active participation from students, who engaged with questions for the speakers.
The week was organized with the support of several companies, which were present at the career fair and participated in the “hire me” initiative, promoting the recruitment of young talent through direct engagement with students and alumni.
