Megan Carey visited Portugal for the first time in August 2005. She and her husband, Michael Orger, had been invited to a wedding, and a Portuguese friend (André Valente) had promised to show them all the good things that Lisbon had to offer. At the time, Megan was a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard Medical School. Amidst some difficulty finding the Capela de São Jerónimo, the discomfort of walking in high heels on the traditional Portuguese cobblestones, and the heat, she remembers rolling her eyes when Mike first suggested: "Lisbon is incredible, one day we should live here!" 

As we were wrapping up an earlier conversation with Champalimaud Foundation (CF) Clinical Director Professor António Parreira, I mentioned that there would be a sister article featuring one of his colleagues, Joe Paton, Director of Neuroscience Research at CF. The plan was to ask the same questions, more or less, to explore whether the cultural outlooks of the clinical and research branches aligned after 20 years. I invited António Parreira to open Joe’s interview with a question.

When António Parreira joined the Champalimaud Foundation (CF) more than a decade ago, the place was still more vision than institution. The building stood ready, white limestone gleaming by the river, but inside, there was little activity. “When I arrived, there were just two of us – two doctors,” he recalls. “It was too small then to think of a community.”

The Champalimaud Foundation (CF) has the advantage of housing a research institute and a clinic under the same roof. Collaboration opportunities are everywhere, and from the start Henrique Veiga-Fernandes made the most of them. He's been linking research and clinic, collaborating with health professionals, and hopes to expand these while inspiring others to do the same.

When Maria João Cardoso arrived at the Champalimaud Foundation (CF) in 2011, the building was almost empty. “There was almost no one there”, she recalls. “It was a ghost institution that progressively came to life”.

When Joaquim Teixeira first heard about the Champalimaud Foundation (CF), it wasn’t in the media or a job ad, it was through a friend, who then invited him for a Happy Hour. “There were maybe twenty people at most, but the atmosphere had gravity. You could sense that something meaningful was about to happen and you wanted to be part of it”, he recalls.

The story of Cátia Feliciano and the Champalimaud Foundation (CF) began when she was still finishing her PhD in Neurobiology at Duke University in Durham, in the United States (USA). With a broad smile, she states that her great passion has always been neuroscience, and that when she heard of the plans to build a large research centre in Lisbon dedicated to this field, returning to Portugal became a possibility.

João Santinha graduated in Biomedical Engineering from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa during one of the longest economic crises Portugal has ever experienced and it was during this time that he heard about the Champalimaud Foundation (CF) for the first time. In a period when there were few opportunities in his field of study, a position opened up on the Scientific Software team that interested him. “I wasn’t selected,” he says smiling, but he adds proudly, “I was invited to another position a few years later.”

Before there was a building by the river, before there were retreats and bustling labs, there was only an idea and a handful of conversations sparked across Lisbon, Boston, and New York.

When Tiago Santos first walked through the glass corridors of the Champalimaud Foundation (CF) in 2014, he already had two years of nursing experience, but none in urology or oncology. “Deep down, one could say I started a new chapter of my career here,” he admits with a wry smile. Indeed, stepping into a nearly empty unit with no reference guides, protocols, or precedents might have made most people run for the hills. But not Tiago. For him, the emptiness was an invitation: a white canvas on which to paint the future of urology nursing at CF.