Sofia Romeiro, a graduate of the Master’s in Telecommunications and Informatics Engineering, won the Huawei Merit Award on April 15, which aims to recognize the academic excellence of the best student in the program. Her work focused on the development of the “FloodKiller” system, designed to mitigate cyberattacks through direct intervention in the network. It was also presented at the SIGCOMM 2025 N2Women Workshop, where it received the Best Student Contribution award.

The award ceremony was attended by Sérgio Pequito, Vice President for Research, Development and External Relations of DEEC, Rogério Colaço, President of Técnico, and Diogo Madeira and Nuno António, representatives of Huawei.

During the ceremony, the finalists—Sofia Romeiro, Francisco Paiva, and João Nunes—presented the work developed throughout their master’s degrees in a short pitch format, also answering questions from the jury. Francisco Paiva developed his thesis in collaboration with the Portuguese Navy. João Nunes presented an alternative to traditional blockchain architectures, a decentralized system for recording and validating information, focusing on efficiency and resilience.

After the jury’s deliberation, the winning student received a monetary prize of €2,250. An additional €1,500 was also awarded to the coordination of the METI program to improve teaching conditions.

The encouragement that comes from these initiatives for students to continue investing in the telecommunications field is immeasurable.

Sofia Romeiro, winner of the Huawei Merit Award

Diogo Madeira da Silva, Director of Huawei Portugal, highlighted that “it is a source of pride to continue contributing to the development of national talent,” reinforcing the importance of this recognition and the ongoing partnership between the company and Técnico. He also expressed hope that Sofia’s journey “can help inspire a new generation of young women to pursue a path in engineering.”

We promote initiatives that recognize student talent and allow them to get closer to the real world, industry, and companies.

Rogério Colaço, President of Técnico

This award is part of the In-Tele Cooperation Protocol, an initiative in the field of telecommunications supported by Huawei Portugal, following an agreement signed with Técnico in September 2025. The agreement foresees the development of joint actions with an impact on advanced training and the interaction between academia and industry.

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