CEGIST held its third annual away-day on 25 July at Belas Clube de Campo, a golf club near Sintra. This year’s turnout of 45 was the highest number of participants to date. The morning began with a review of CEGIST activity over the last year presented by the centre’s President, Tânia Ramos. This was followed by team building activities outside on the golf course where CEGIST’s 45 beginners worked with professional coaches to begin to master classic golf swings. The session ended with a long and short distance stroke competition won by the Team of João Lourenço, Linda Canales, Lucia Piedade, Marc Scholten, Margarida Catalão, Maria Isabel Pedro and Maria Lopes.
The afternoon was focused on the centre’s forthcoming five-yearly FCT Research Unit Evaluation. It began with a presentation by Leonardo Azevedo, current President of IST’s CERENA research centre, who shared the experience of his centre in the FCT evaluation process. This was followed by Tânia Ramos talking us through the details of CEGIST’s written submission to the Research Unit Evaluation earlier this year. This then led into a Think-Group-Share session where six groups discussed different areas of the centre’s strategy for the coming 2025 to 2029 period. After each group had presented their findings, Daniel Santos, Hugo Castro Silva and Bill Williams outlined plans for forthcoming activities in a Next Steps session. The day ended with an informal farewell cocktail.
Financed by Portuguese funds through the FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., under the projects UIDB/00097/2020 and UIDP/00097/2020