Back in 1975 the Universidade NOVA de Lisboa launched the first higher education program in Computer Science and Informatics in Portugal, the “Licenciatura em Engenharia Informática da UNL”, at the same time the world witnessed the innovation explosion that placed computing technology at the service of each of us and of society in general.
Many faculty members that contributed to establish the Departament are associated to the development of Informatics in the country, such as for instance in the first connection of Portugal to the Internet, in the education of the first PhD degrees awarded nationally, as well as in the consolidation of many key IT and computing research and innovation.
The NOVA Laboratory for Computer Science and Informatics, research unit associate to the Department, hosts many exciting research projects, involving national and international collaborations. NOVA LINCS hosts more 36 integrated researchers for a total of around 50, and about 60 PhD students, and was graded “EXCELLENT” in the last FC&T evaluation exercise.:
Our educational programs are acknowledged by their quality and atuality by national and international employers, and are well integrated with NOVA LINCS research ativities, prominently at the graduate level. According to recent statistics, the employability rate of our Computer Science and Engineering program exceeds 99%. Currently, we host more than 800 students, originating from all regions in the country and many from broad, with tenths of Erasmus students exchanges per year.
We also promote many outreach and society liasion activities in our fields of scientific, technical and advanced education expertise, recording in our portfolio countless extension activities in collaboration with private companies, public institutions and knowledge users.
In 2015, the Departamento de Informática da NOVA is proud of being acknowledged as a national reference in advanced education and research in Computer Science and Informatics, and a competing actor at the international level.