Too much bureaucracy... almost no work.

In last September, the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) granted me a scholarship for my PhD studies. Unfortunately, the amount of bureaucracy needed to activate it turns out to be incredibly large. Therefore, I am still trying to gather all documents they need, because every time I go there they ask me for one more document missing or for a document different from one I have, which seems to be unsuitable for them. I am so tired...

Moreover, during the winter semester I am teaching "Human-Computer Interaction" and most of my time in the last few weeks was dedicated to it.

As a result of all this and other stuff, my research work is completely stopped. There are no softer way to describe it. Now, looking ahead I just hope that with the new year I can start a "new life".

Gathering requirements from mould industry

My PhD work is integrated in the EuroTooling21 project, which aims to improve competitiveness in European Mouldmaking and Special Tooling Industry.

Today I attended my first meetings within the EuroTooling21 project. These meetings were held in Marinha Grande on two distinct mould industry companies. There we performed a preliminary task analysis and gathered overall user requirements.

Besides users from the mould industry, other researchers from computer sciences and mechanics department from Instituto Superior Técnico and developers from Partner Solutions participate in these meetings. Thus, it was possible to know our closer partners within the EuroTooling21 project in person, providing a good chance to strengthen the relationships. Additionally, we perform task assignment and definition of next steps.

I consider these meetings as the kick-off for my PhD thesis, since I do nothing until now. Therefore, in my point of view I started my PhD on December 3rd, 2004. Let's see how my work goes from here....