The 11th edition of the LASIGE Workshop took place on Wednesday, May 20, 2026, celebrating the vibrant and diverse research within the unit. This annual event once again provided a platform for sharing ongoing work and fostering collaboration among LASIGE members.
This year’s program featured two keynote talks delivered by researchers from LASIGE, Helena Aidos explored “The Challenge of Temporal Phenotyping” and João Guerreiro reflected on “The Breadth and Depth of (My Research on) Blind Accessibility”.
A regular highlight of the event is the award ceremony, which celebrates the achievements of LASIGE members over the past year. Awards were distributed across several categories, recognising contributions that ranged from societal impact to academic excellence.
Best Outreach Initiative
Bernardo Ferreira together with his MSc student Bruno Cotrim launched ArchiveChain with the goal of improving the sustainability and decentralisation of web archival systems, including the Wayback Machine and Arquivo.pt. The project created a new type of energy-efficient blockchain model, called Proof-of-Useful-Space, where web pages from archival systems are used as the non-fudgeable resource that fuels the blockchain system and blockchain participants are incentivised to store archival pages and rewarded proportionally, with cryptocurrencies, to the amount of pages stored. It helps to decentralize web archival systems and reduce their operational costs and allows running smart contracts and cryptocurrencies through a sustainable and energy-efficient blockchain model that is open to everyone and doesn’t waste energy nor storage resources. ArchiveChain showcased how research can combine technological innovation with societal benefit, winning the .PT honorable mention for the “best work incentivised by a professor” at the 2025 Arquivo.pt awards and being featured in the Publico newspaper, Faculty of Sciences, Sapo Tek news.
Best Outreach Initiative – Runner-up
André Rodrigues and João Guerreiro, for the demonstration of a strong commitment to outreach and disseminate the research of their team (special recognition to the PhD students David Gonçalves and Pedro Trindade) on inclusive gaming and virtual reality by participating in events with broad public audiences, while also contributing to national media visibility, such as Lisboa Games Week (Portugal’s largest gaming event, reaching 15k+ students and 40k visitors), Lisbon City Hall and local libraries for Biblio Gamers 2025, blind-accessible VR experiences and games to the National Youth Paralympic Day, and featuring in Publico newspaper and at the RDP’s “Isto faz-se por cá”.
Best PhD Student
Filipa Rocha and Samaneh Shafee received the top honour for their work.
Best Early Career Researcher
Isabel Neto was recognised for her scientific output throughout 2025.
Special Recognitions were also presented to researchers who have excelled in the following areas:
- International Funding – Cátia Pesquita
- Tech Transfer – Nuno Garcia
- Strategic Partnerships – Alan Oliveira
- Media Presence – Ana Luísa Respício
- Future Generations – Rúben Branco and Paulo Canelas
Distinguished Publications
This category highlighted research published in top-tier journals and conferences, underscoring LASIGE’s commitment to excellence in research. A total of 34 articles were awarded prizes, full details are available here.
As in previous editions, students had the opportunity to present their current research during the poster session, where participants selected the two best posters:
Best Poster – PhD Student
It was awarded to “Barista: Synthesizing Typestate Specifications with LLM Agents”, by Catarina Gamboa, Paulo Canelas, Ricardo Costa, Márcio Caetano, Jonathan Aldrich, Alcides Fonseca.
Best Poster – MSc Student
“Dynamic Household Energy Use Profiling and Short-Term Forecasting”, by Nuno Costa, Pedro M. Ferreira, Alan Oliveira, and José Cecílio, was awarded in this category.
All the posters are available here, and the most inquisitive and questioning attendees during the poster session were Mattia Petrolo and Manuel Piçarra, who deserved due recognition.
The Advent of Code Award, designed by Alcides Fonseca, and supported by LASIGE, was awarded to Rodrigo Frutuoso. Advent of Code is an Advent calendar of small programming puzzles for a variety of skill levels that can be solved in any programming language, used as interview prep, company training, university coursework, practice problems, speed contest, or to challenge each other.
The LASIGE Workshop continues to be a key highlight in the unit’s calendar, reinforcing community ties and showcasing the excellence driving its research initiatives.
We would also like to take this opportunity to thank the PhD Student Committee: Laura Balbi, Daniel Reis, Pedro Trindade, Hugo Figueiras, Jorge Guerreiro, Mariana Gouveia and Beatriz Guerreiro who organised and delivered this event with such dedication and professionalism!
