Filipa Rocha, LASIGE’s PhD student, has been acknowledged at the annual ‘As Melhores & As Maiores do Portugal Tecnológico’ awards by Exame Informática. The awards, assigned by the editorial team at Exame Informática, aim to amplify the creation of knowledge and technology-based wealth in the country by acknowledging exceptional individuals and their contributions that might go unnoticed.

Filipa Rocha’s Block-Based Accessible Tangible Programming System (BATS) addresses challenges faced by the 90 million young people worldwide with visual impairments. BATS, designed to program and control a robot using Lego blocks, earned Filipa Rocha an honorable mention in the category of Social Responsibility. Earlier, the invention had already had earned her a second place in the Young Inventors Award by the European Patent Office.