Who we are

The Mind-Brain College of the University of Lisbon integrates 7 Schools (Faculdade de Ciências (FCUL), Faculdade de Farmácia (FFUL), Faculdade de Letras (FLUL), Faculdade de Medicina (FMUL), Faculdade de Psicologia (FPUL), Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) e Instituto de Ciências Socias (ICS), which welcome or are connected to research centers in essential areas important to the mind and brain studies.

All these Schools, under the umbrella of the Mind-Brain College, are engaged in joint PhD Doctoral Programmes, namely the PhD Programmes in: Integrated Neuroscience; Cognitive Science; Robotics, Brain and Cognition. These programmes privilege inter-institutional co-supervision of students.

The College has as scientific domains the interdisciplinary study of the mind and brain. The College aims to promote the integrative study of the mind and brain into their different approaches, contributing to a better understanding of the mind and brain, with consequent social and economic benefits.

Mission

The Mind-Brain College will promote the interaction between scientific, technical and formative valences to further understand brain and cognition as well as to communicate with and for the society about the scientific research performed at the Universidade de Lisboa.

Being heterogeneous, this College will greatly benefit from core and concise initiatives that act as primers of interdisciplinary research.

The Mind-Brain College has the specific goals:

  • To potentiate the execution and development of joint doctoral programmes.
  • To increase potential of the Universidade de Lisboa, through a network articulation of human, scientific and organizational resources.
  • To consolidate a reference role of the Universidade de Lisboa in the mind-brain fields, increasing a cluster of applications in relevant social areas as health, education, aging, managing of crisis and socials movements, among others.
  • To promote the Universidade de Lisboa as a national leader and privileged interlocutor to international partnerships.
  • To increase competitively and visibility of the Universidade de Lisboa in other fields, potentiating partnership with technological innovation systems and knowledge transfer.

Vision

The Mind-Brain College intends to reach several results, between them:

  • To potentiate the transdisciplinary scientific activity in the mind-brain field, which will be measured by the increase of the bibliometric indicators.
  • To promote the capacity of attracting national and international PhD students, which will leads to an increase in the number of PhDs per year.
  • To increase the capacity of getting national and international financing.
  • To increase of the social impact of the created knowledge, with the connections to the business field.

Executive Comission

  • Director: Prof. José Santos-Victor (Instituto Superior Técnico)
  • Executive Director: Prof. Ana Sebastião (Faculdade de Medicina)
  • Executive Director: Prof. Sónia Frota (Faculdade de Letras)
  • Executive Director: Prof. Dora Brites (Faculdade de Farmácia)
  • Executive Director: Prof. Ana Luísa Raposo (Faculdade de Psicologia)

Coordinating Council

Composed by members of the coordinating councils of the 3 core doctoral programmes, but can also include others members that do not belong to those commissions.

Manager

Former manager (August 2015 – February 2019) Rita Aroeira

How to become a member?

To become a member you need to do research in topics related to the mind-brain field at the Universidade de Lisboa.

You can do a self-proposal, with your short CV and a motivation letter explaining the reasons why you want to become a member of the College. The application will then be evaluated by the Executive Commission of the College for approval.

Internal Activities

  • Joint Seminars
  • Sharing of curricular units between the Doctoral Programmes
  • Shared supervision (between different Schools from Universidade de Lisboa) of PhD students
  • Cross fertilization of research promoted by researchers and teaching of different Schools from Universidade de Lisboa.
  • Sharing of data, equipments and laboratory infrastructures

External activities of networking and communication

  • Annual meeting (with international outstanding researchers)
  • Mind-brain awareness week
  • Networking and internationalization