Instituto Superior Técnico

History

The Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) was created from the split of the Lisbon Commercial and Industrial Institute (IICL) into two schools. Following the implantation of the Republic in Portugal in 1910, Alfredo Bensaúde, a professor of Mineralogy and Geology at the IICL, was invited by Manuel de Brito Camacho, Minister of Development in the Provisional Government, to create and lead a new technical school, as part of nationwide education reforms. A decree approved on 23 May 1911 and published in the Diário do Governo declared that the IICL would be split into two schools: the Instituto Superior do Comércio (current Lisbon School of Economics and Management) and the Instituto Superior Técnico.

Alfredo Bensaúde was the first director of IST, a position he held from 1911 to 1920. He implemented its first pedagogical program, which had five engineering courses: mining engineering, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and chemical-industrial engineering. Under his direction, there was an investment in theoretical-practical teaching where workshops and laboratories, as well as the library, played an essential role. He also noted for recruiting foreign teachers, which he considered to have an essential role in organizing some of the courses.

The first facilities of IST were located in the Rua da Boavista in Lisbon. In 1927, Duarte Pacheco became director of IST and started the project for a new campus for the school. He requested the design to architect Porfírio Pardal Monteiro, who counted with the collaboration of Luís Benavente, a fellow architect, in the project. The construction of the Alameda campus started in 1928 and was finished in 1935, with the inauguration happening the following year. IST became the first academic institution in Portugal with its own campus. In the meantime, in 1930, IST became part of the newly created Technical University of Lisbon. In 1948, IST hosted the "Fifteen Years of Public Works" exhibition, an event organized by the Portuguese State to exhibit the new infrastructures built in the first 15 years of the Estado Novo. The statue of a woman holding a square and compass, by Salvador Barata Feyo, placed in the northern side of the campus, is a sculpture from this exhibition that was permanently added to the Alameda campus.

Between 1952 and 1972, 12 study centres were established in Portugal, three of them at IST, in the fields of Chemistry, Geology and Mineralogy, and Electronics. These centres were responsible for promoting faculty training and scientific qualification through doctoral studies in universities and research centres abroad.

Campuses and facilities

IST has three campuses: the Alameda campus in Lisbon, the Taguspark campus in the Oeiras municipality, and the Tecnológico e Nuclear campus in the Loures municipality.

Alameda campus

The Alameda campus is the primary location of IST. It was inaugurated in 1936 as the first dedicated university campus in Portugal. It is located in the freguesia of Areeiro, in Lisbon.

The campus originally had seven buildings. Throughout the years, new buildings were constructed inside the campus, expanding the facilities of IST. Some of the buildings added after 1936 include:

The Interdisciplinary Complex, opened in 1973;

The Civil Engineering and Architecture Pavilion, opened in 1993;

The North Tower, opened in 1994;

The South Tower, opened in 2000;

The Social Action Pavilion, opened in 2003.

Currently the campus has a total of 26 buildings. Apart from lecture and research buildings, it includes a dedicated canteen building, a building for the students' association, playing fields for sports, an indoor swimming pool, and a kindergarten.

Taguspark campus

IST inaugurated a second campus in the Taguspark, a science and technology park in Porto Salvo, in the Oeiras municipality, in 2000. The campus consists of a main building, a sports field and a hall of residence.

Taguspark is located about 14 km to the west of the Alameda campus. A free shuttle bus service connecting the Alameda and Taguspark campuses is available for exclusive use of the IST community.

As of the academic year 2023–2024, three bachelor's degree programmes and five master's degree programmes are lectured in the Taguspark campus.

Tecnológico e Nuclear campus

The Tecnológico e Nuclear campus was added to IST in 2012. It is located in Bobadela, in the municipality of Loures, about 9 km northeast of the Alamada campus. Prior to its addition to IST, the campus belonged to the Technological and Nuclear Institute (Portuguese: Instituto Tecnológico e Nuclear), which was extinguished in December 2011 by governmental decree.

The campus contained the only nuclear reactor in Portugal, which was used for more than 50 years for scientific research. The reactor was stopped on 11 May 2016 and dismantled in 2019.

As of the academic year 2023–2024, two master's degree programmes use the facilities in this campus: Radiation Protection and Safety, and Science and Technology for the Cultural Heritage.

Halls of residence

IST has two official halls of residence for its students:

The Eng. Duarte Pacheco residence, located in the freguesia of Parque das Nações, which opened in 1998 for students in the Alameda campus.

The Prof. Ramôa Ribeiro residence, located in the Taguspark campus, which opened in 2013 for students in this campus.

Education

As of the academic year 2023–2024, IST offers undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in the following domains:

Aerospace engineering

Applied mathematics and computation

Architecture

Biological engineering

Biomedical engineering

Chemical engineering

Civil engineering

Computer science and engineering

Data science

Electrical and computer engineering

Electronics engineering

Engineering physics

Environmental engineering

Industrial engineering and management

Materials engineering

Mechanical engineering

Mining and geological engineering

Naval architecture and ocean engineering

Telecommunications and informatics engineering

IST is also actively involved in several networks and international programs to promote student mobility, both at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Through a large number of agreements with other institutions worldwide, IST students can join double degree programmes and joint PhD programmes with universities in Europe, the United States, Brazil, and Israel.

Affiliations

IST is a member of several academic and scientific networks and associations, including:

Advanced Technology Higher Education Network (ATHENS)

Conference of European Schools for Advanced Engineering Education and Research (CESAER), a non-profit association of leading engineering universities in Europe

Consortium Linking Universities of Science and Technology for Education and Research (CLUSTER), a network of leading European universities of technology

Heritage Network, a network of European and Indian technical higher education institutions

Magalhães Network, a network of European, Latin American and Caribbean universities

Partnership of a European Group of Aeronautics and Space Universities (PEGASUS)

Sino-European Engineering Education Platform (SEEEP), a collaboration between the members of CLUSTER and Chinese universities in the areas of science, technology and engineering

Top International Managers in Engineering (T.I.M.E.)

Student activities

IST students have a variety of groups and activities that they can join.

Students' association

The students' association of the Instituto Superior Técnico (AEIST, Portuguese: Associação dos Estudantes do Instituto Superior Técnico) is the organization that represents and supports the students of IST. It was established on 11 December 1911, when IST was just 8 months old.

In the present day, the AEIST organizes activities and initiatives in the areas of social responsibility, culture, sports, training, employability and recreation.

Sports

IST and its students' association are represented in various sports.

The most notable sports team from IST is the Clube de Rugby do Técnico, a rugby union club founded in 1963. The club has become three-times champion of the top-tier rugby league in Portugal (most recently in the 2020–2021 season), four-times winner of the Portuguese Rugby Cup, and winner of the Portuguese Super Cup in 1994.

The students' association competes in basketball (men/women), chess, futsal (men/women), handball (men/women), karting, padel, rugby sevens (men), squash, table tennis, tennis, and volleyball (men/women).

Tunas

IST has three tunas:

Tuna Universitária do Instituto Superior Técnico (TUIST), the male tuna, established in 1993

Tuna Feminina do Instituto Superior Técnico (TFIST), the female tuna, established in 1994

Tuna Mista do Instituto Superior Técnico (TMIST), a mixed tuna based in the Taguspark campus, established in 2006

The TUIST organizes each year the International Tunas Festival of the City of Lisbon, which is held at the Coliseu dos Recreios in Lisbon.

Other groups

Notable student groups in IST are:

BEST Lisboa, local group of the Board of European Students of Technology, formed in 1989 as one of the 12 founding groups

Diferencial, the IST students' newspaper, established in 1991

Formula Student Lisboa (FST Lisboa), a Formula racing engineering team that competes in Formula Student competitions, established in 2001

Grupo de Estratégia, Simulação e Táctica (GEST), focused on event coordination around wargames, board games, tabletop and trading card games.

Grupo de Teatro do Instituto Superior Técnico (GTIST), the theatre group of IST, first active from 1960 to 1971 and revived in 1992

HackerSchool, a hackerspace started in 2012, centered on the development of various engineering projects themed around free software and open hardware.

JUNITEC, junior enterprise of IST, established in 1990

Núcleo de Arte Fotográfica (NAF), artistic photography group of IST, established in the 1950s

Projecto de Sustentabilidade Energética Móvel (PSEM), an engineering team that designs and builds electric vehicles to compete in the Greenpower racing competitions, established in 2013

Técnico Solar Boat, an engineering team established in 2015 that develops solar, hydrogen and autonomous boats

TLMoto, a sports motorcycle engineering team that competes in MotoStudent, established in 2012

Recurring events

Some of the most notable recurring events organized by students of IST are:

Arraial do Técnico, a music festival that takes place at the Alameda campus at the start of the academic year, organized by the AEIST

SINFO, a tech conference organized by a dedicated team. Takes place annually since 1993

Reputation

Rankings

The University of Lisbon, which IST is part of, is the institution represented in global university rankings. Nevertheless, IST is represented indirectly in the rankings for the specific subjects of engineering and technology.

Employability

In a survey conducted in 2022 to 1450 IST postgraduates who graduated during the year 2020, 96.7% of the inquired indicated that they were employed, 80.4% reported that they got employed within 6 months of their graduation, and 73.6% indicated that they are working in their field of study.

Criticism

IST has a reputation for the high level of difficulty of its courses, which results in a considerable number of dropouts in the undergraduate courses. Students and graduates have criticized some of the courses' programmes for being too focused on theory and lacking practical training.

A 2021 survey to IST students, which gathered 1,987 responses, revealed that 16% of the students felt that they had been target of moral harassment and 5% had been target of sexual harassment.

Notable alumni

IST alumni have held prominent positions in politics, research organizations and the business sector, in Portugal and internationally. Three Prime Ministers of Portugal were IST alumni, of which one (António Guterres) currently serves as the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Academics, researchers and inventors

António Câmara (Lic. civil engineering, 1977) – researcher in virtual and augmented reality, co-founder and former CEO of YDreams, professor at the NOVA School of Science and Technology

Maria Amélia Chaves (Lic. civil engineering, 1937) – first female civil engineer to graduate from IST, first Portuguese woman to graduate and then work in civil engineering, and the first Portuguese female engineer to work in the field.

Raul Pires Ferreira Chaves (Lic. civil engineering, early 1920s) – civil engineer, inventor of the MURUS system (a precursor of current modular construction systems)

Pedro Domingos (electrical and computer engineering, Lic. 1988, M.Sc. 1992) – researcher in machine learning, professor emeritus at the University of Washington, author of The Master Algorithm

Mário A. T. Figueiredo (electrical and computer engineering, Lic. 1986, M.Sc. 1989, Ph.D. 1994) – academic and researcher, Distinguished Professor at IST

Isabel Gago (Lic. in chemical engineering, 1939) – second woman to study engineering in Portugal and first woman to teach chemical engineering in Portugal

Nuno Loureiro (MSc in engineering physics, 2000) – plasma physicist, director of the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center from 2024 until his murder in 2025

João Arménio Correia Martins (Lic. civil engineering, 1976) – researcher in solid mechanics and biomechanics, professor in IST's Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture from 1986 to 2008