Highlighting the beginning of 2022, the annual edition of the Young University Rankings of the Times Higher Education (THE), placed NOVA in 18th position among young European institutions founded less than 50 years ago.
Soon after, NOVA was collaborating on a best practice manual on the impact of the pandemic on gender (dis)equality -aware that COVID-19 had an unequal impact on people with responsibilities as carers - particularly women. Thus emerged the Scientific and Academic Gender (in)equality during COVID-19 (SAGE19) project.
2022 was also the year in which NOVA cemented its position in the alliance of ten European universities EUTOPIA - the happy acronym of European Universities Transforming to an Open Inclusive Academy.
NOVA was also present at the UN Oceans Conference, the most important event of the year on the state of the oceans, which took place in Lisbon under the slogan "Saving the oceans and the future of the planet".
2022 was also the year in which NOVA was considered the "Entrepreneurial University of the Year" at the Triple-E Awards event. It was the first time that a higher education institution in Europe was distinguished for its role in creating value in society through innovation.
This was also the year to open more horizons to SUPERNOVA - a unique programme in Portugal for pre-university students designed to help students from different countries to adapt to the European education system: from the next semester, in February 2023, it already guarantees passage to the first year in one of several of NOVA's partner universities: Ca' Foscari, in Venice, CY Cergy, in Paris, or Lancaster University, in the United Kingdom. This list of new possibilities also includes the University of Algarve and the new NOVA campus in Cairo.
Throughout 2022 another strategic pillar of the university has also gained strength and goes by the name of Sustainability: NOVA not only promoted Sustainability Week, dedicated to its academic community, but also launched a website exclusively dedicated to the subject.
2022 will also go stay in NOVA's history as the year of opening doors to the first campus of a Portuguese university outside of Portugal. It is in the region of the new administrative capital of Egypt and is called NOVA Cairo.
This was also the year in which NOVA was distinguished at the European level as the "Young Entrepreneurial University of the Year" by appearing at the top of the ranking of universities with more entrepreneurial students. Elaborated by Startup Portugal, the list revealed that NOVA graduated 268 students who later founded companies.
In 2022 we also learn that there are a total of 76 researchers from NOVA among the most quoted scientists in the world. Known as the World's Top 2% Scientists List, and released by the University of Stanford, it includes the impact of scientific work in the last year and also throughout the career, in which NOVA registered an increase of 37.5 per cent.
It was already 35 years ago that NOVA was among the founders of that programme that changed forever Higher Education in Europe and that did even more for the European construction than many treaties. Erasmus is its name.
Last, but not least, 2022 was the year in which NOVA renewed its strategy of opening to society with the opening of the largest sports complex on one of its campuses.