Imagine a week dedicated to international collaboration, critical reflection, and the development of solutions to global challenges — all within an inspiring and unconventional environment. This was the spirit of the 3rd edition of the EUTOPIA Doctoral Summer School, organised by the NOVA Doctoral School of NOVA University Lisbon, which took place from 18 to 22 July 2025, with sustainability as its central theme.
The initiative brought together 27 doctoral students from 14 universities, representing 15 nationalities and 27 research programmes. The aim was to bring together different fields of knowledge to collectively reflect on current scientific challenges and develop solutions as a team.
Paradise, just around the corner!
The programme began, just like in previous editions, with four residential days at the Convento da Arrábida, a site of great historical and natural value, which inspired group project development, working sessions and debates, all within a co-creation dynamic — a format widely praised by the students, who highlighted the setting as a key element of the experience.
The final day took place at the Rectorate of NOVA, where the groups publicly presented their final projects. The session was attended by Vice-Rector João Amaro de Matos, responsible for Education and International Development, who awarded the participation certificates.
On the road to Brussels
The highlight of this last session was the announcement of the winning project: “CertifAI – Sustainable LLMs in Healthcare”, an innovative proposal applying state-of-the-art language models (LLMs) to the healthcare sector.
The project explores the potential of artificial intelligence to interpret, understand and generate text that meets sustainability goals while improving the quality of care provided.
The team, composed of students from Vilnius Tech, Göteborgs Universitet, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, NOVA IMS and NMS, secured a place at the upcoming edition of the Responsible Internationalisation Summit, an event focused on promoting ethical, sustainable and socially responsible internationalisation practices in higher education, to be held in Brussels.
Celebrating diversity
This edition also stood out for its institutional and geographical diversity, with participants from eight academic units of NOVA, four partner universities of the EUTOPIA Alliance, one European university outside the network, and one Brazilian university.
The programme was further enriched by contributions from distinguished speakers:
- Antonio Luna García (Universitat Pompeu Fabra), who discussed success and failure cases in urban sustainability;
- Karen François (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), who reflected on the challenges of interdisciplinarity and the use of artificial intelligence in doctoral research;
- Júlia Seixas, NOVA’s Pro-Rector for Sustainability, who offered a broad perspective on the topic;
- António Granado (NOVA FCSH), who explored effective strategies for science communication.
Organised by Professors Paula Macedo (ENSP-NOVA), Iva Miranda Pires (NOVA FCSH) and Kevin Gallagher (FCT NOVA), the Summer School also benefited from the guidance of three mentors: Ana Nuno, Luísa Santos and Tomás Pinheiro.
