The Polytechnic of Coimbra

The Polytechnic of Coimbra (IPC) is a public higher education institution created in 1979, which encompasses six schools: Coimbra Agriculture School (ESAC); Coimbra Education School (ESEC); Oliveira do Hospital Management and Technology School (ESTGOH); Coimbra Health School (ESTeSC); Coimbra Business School (ISCAC) and Coimbra Institute of Engineering (ISEC). By combining strong practical activities with solid theoretical education, the courses available are labor market oriented and assure high employment rates. Updated info evidences that IPC:
• has got almost 10.000 students, 653 teachers and 378 non teachers’ personnel;
• has got more than 45% of personnel with a phD degree;
• researchers/teachers are integrated in more than 25 scientific R&D centers recognized by FCT, including CERNAS hosted by IPC itself,
• researchers and technical staff are involved in more than 60 national and 9 EU (H2020, INTERREG, LIFE) financed projects at the moment, among several technical and scientific specialized and applied services to SME;
• has been increasing its relative position in scientific production rankings (15th in Portugal), aiming at short-medium term to set among the first 10 national institutions and within the SCIMAGO ranking top 120 Latin American institutions;
• has been involved in more than 15 national and international patent processes over the past few years, in the scientific fields of Mechanics; Electronics and Automation; Health Sciences and Agricultural, Environmental and Food Sciences.

With the vision of gaining national and international scientific scale and weight, IPC includes the Coimbra Applied Research Institute (i2a), which aims to: a) promote, stimulate, support and manage applied research activities; b) contribute to the rationalization and integrated management of IPC scientific resources; c) develop applied research and technology and knowledge transfer to industries and community to better develop and improve products, processes and services.
i2a coordinates 6 high tech laboratories focused on health, biomechanics, ICT and natural and endogenous resources issues, with an investment amount over 3,2 M€ and fully aligned with the national and regional RIS3. These labs aggregate top scientific equipment’s and infrastructures, as well as multidisciplinary and integrated research teams. They are the Laboratory of Applied Biomechanics – LAB; the Laboratory of Applied Health Sciences – LABINSAÚDE; the Laboratory of High Performance Computation – LACED; the Laboratory of Robotics and Human Interaction – ROBOCORP; the Laboratory of Sustainable Industrial Solutions - SISUS and the Laboratory of Endogenous and Natural Resources Valorization - VALOREN.
Focused on industrial systems, namely of the agro-food sector, SISUS laboratory has got several analytical equipment’s and pilot plants categorized by its specificity on biochemistry and microbiology, biological technology, environmental technology, separation processes, applied research to chemical engineering, materials science and instrumental analysis, among others.
With several technical similitudes’ to the previous lab, VALOREN focuses on primary production, namely what concerns the control of its environmental impacts and the increase of its production activities efficiency. The lab has got specialized equipment’s on the domains of biotechnology, agronomy, forestry, veterinary, environmental and food sciences.