A phone call and a blank page

One phone call set everything in motion. It changed Leonor Beleza’s life and ultimately shaped the lives of countless others who would one day find their way to the Champalimaud Foundation (CF). It was not just a phone call, of course, but the culmination of everything Leonor had built over decades of public service, women's rights advocacy, political experience and a deep belief that institutions exist to serve people.

Years before his death, António Champalimaud called Leonor Beleza to ask a deceptively simple question: would she be willing to preside over the foundation he intended to create in his will? Her response was immediate, “Yes”. The conversation was brief, almost unceremonious, but the weight of what it implied was already unmistakable. No one knew what the project would be, nor its scope, nor the shape it might take. But Leonor understood the depth of the trust being placed in her.

When the will was opened, the ambiguity was striking. “António Champalimaud could have left instructions,” she says. “I asked him to. But he didn’t.” Instead, he left something broader: freedom and responsibility in equal measure. “Our task,” she recalls, “was to understand what the Founder might have wanted, while accepting that he had deliberately placed the future in our hands.”

What followed did not resemble the execution of someone else’s plan but rather the act of beginning from a blank page. A small core team was formed, including João Silveira Botelho, whose combination of strategic clarity and operational drive Leonor describes as crucial, to spearhead this endeavour. Together they began to imagine a project without limiting its ambition, drawing on their own vision and initiative, with the support of Daniel Proença de Carvalho and scientific curators António Coutinho and António Damásio. 

Very early on, they immersed themselves in an intensive learning journey, visiting laboratories, universities, philanthropic organisations and hospitals, particularly in the United States. They gathered facts, advice, warnings and encouragement. Coming from the world of law and politics,  Leonor often says she had to learn “how scientists think.” That learning curve became their guide.

The initial focus was on vision research, but as they learned more, the path broadened.
Neuroscience emerged as an area of immense human suffering not matched by proportional investment. Cancer, too, required an approach where discovery and care were fully integrated. CF would not simply fund work at a distance. It would conduct research, provide clinical care, and carry out what Leonor later called “the full cycle of biomedical inquiry.”

This model, Leonor points out, is one of CF’s most original contributions: “We practice what we call ‘fusion research’, investigators and clinicians working side by side with patients to accelerate discovery.” It is, she believes, aligned with the founder’s hope: to create a place where science, tangibly, improves lives.

If defining “what” CF would do required learning, defining “where” it would stand required perseverance. Securing the riverside site in Lisbon proved to be one of the most demanding challenges of her leadership. There were obstacles, refusals, and long delays, met with tenacity, and repeated effort until the land where the Tagus meets the Atlantic was finally secured. A symbolic location, once the departure point of Portuguese navigators into unknown seas.

With the site confirmed, attention turned to the architect. Inviting Charles Correa proved pivotal. He believed that buildings must embody the spirit of their purpose, and the future campus would reflect both Portugal’s history of exploration and the contemporary journey of scientific discovery.

The name of the campus emerged unexpectedly, over a lunch table, before construction even began. At that table sat Leonor Beleza, Charles Correa, the immunologist Maria de Sousa, and João Silveira Botelho. They discussed concepts, identities, intentions, when João suddenly said, “Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown”. The table fell briefly quiet before they all agreed: the name was perfect, it captured, in one phrase, the ambition to explore what is not yet known and the humility of recognising how much remains to be discovered. From that moment, as Leonor puts it, the institution gained not only a building but a statement of purpose.​ The phrase captured everything: ambition, curiosity, humility, discovery.

The construction years were both exhausting and exhilarating. There was the “insane race,” as Leonor calls it, to inaugurate the Centre on 5 October 2010, the centenary of the Portuguese Republic, a date heavy with symbolic meaning. There were technical challenges that nearly derailed key architectural choices: the auditorium’s immense window that seemed nearly impossible to build, the bridge linking the buildings, the delicate engineering of the glass façade. Each obstacle, pushed a little further, became a defining feature of the campus.

Meanwhile, the Champalimaud Foundation was already active. Researchers were hosted at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência; partnerships and collaborations were being established and recruitment of a world-class team had begun. Very early on, CF launched the António Champalimaud Vision Award. Its first ceremony, held at the Presidential Palace in New Delhi, remains vivid in Leonor’s memory, President Abdul Kalam calling it “the Nobel Prize of Vision,” a signal that an institution not yet built in Lisbon was already recognised internationally.

There were also personal encounters and losses that left lasting marks: conversations with Simone Veil in Paris about CF’s mission; Jacques Delors’s agreeing to collaborate because of its focus on clinical cancer research; the first visit to the LV Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad in 2006, the emotional moment of announcing the inaugural Vision Award at Aravind Eye Care in Madurai and the death of António Borges, a key member of the first Board of Directors.

Yet the moment she returns to most often, when reminiscing, is the inauguration of the Centre for the Unknown. “On that day,” she says, “everything was there”: the architecture, the science, the river light, the ambition to serve, the memory of the Founder.

Looking back, Leonor describes the Champalimaud Foundation life in four phases.
The first, up to 2008, defined its profile, launched the Vision Award, and began recruiting researchers.
The second, from 2008 to 2011, focused on construction.
The third, from 2011 to 2018, saw laboratories and clinics flourish, and the clinical centre growing from an outpatient care to a full surgical and clinical centre.
The fourth and current phase is defined by major expansions: the Botton-Champalimaud Centre for pancreatic cancer and a bold investment in digital therapies through the Centre for Restorative Neurotechnology.

Her attention, however, is firmly on what lies ahead. Leonor envisions a future where treatments are truly personalised, where artificial intelligence transforms discovery and care, and where technology and human judgment must find a delicate balance. “The more technology we use,” she notes, “the more attention we must give to the person in front of us.”

A single call did begin the journey. But everything that followed, the imagination, the perseverance, the ambition, the humanity, has been built day by day by a team united around a shared vision, passion and purpose. Together, they created an institution that continues to improve lives, near and far.

Leonor Beleza, President, Champalimaud Foundation

Text by Teresa Fernandes, Co-coordinator of the Champalimaud Foundation's Communication, Events & Outreach Team

Full 20 Years, 20 Stories Collection here.