Science You Can Believe In

On 14 November, CEO Team Coordinator Catarina Ramos joined a group of experts at ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa for a roundtable discussion about trust in science. This marked the culmination of the European Commission-funded POIESIS project, an international research consortium spanning seven countries.

This year, we thought of doing something a bit different that would:

- bring our community together 
- unleash our creativity (we may not be artists but scientists and health professionals can be super creative!)
- result in beautiful and unique artistic images that could be shared with you!

“I’m exactly as I was 10 years ago”, says Kina García, a Spanish woman from the Granada region, as she addresses by Zoom, from her home, the audience of the International Conference on Neurodegenerative Diseases, gathered on a Saturday morning at the Champalimaud Foundation’s auditorium, in Lisbon. The date is appropriate: it is September 21 – World Alzheimer's Day. 

Joining institutions such as the Max Planck Society, Germany (#1), the Allen Institute, USA (#6), and the Pasteur Institute, France (#13), the CF's ranking places it among the world’s top contributors to neuroscience, and as the only Portuguese institution to make the list. The ranking is based on its contribution to published research, which is measured by both the number of articles (“Count”) and the portion of authorship (“Share”).

On the 3rd of October, a full day pre-meeting summit was held on the KPro, the revolutionising keratoprosthesis developed by Claes Dohlman, laureate of the 2022 António Champalimaud Vision Award, receiving it shortly after his 100th birthday. The summit celebrated Dohlman’s legacy with recent advances partly funded by the award and innovative work from around the globe. 
 

The regatta coincided with Portugal's Implantação da República holiday and the 14th anniversary of the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown. Boats set sail at 11:00 am, with participants and spectators gathering at the Champalimaud Foundation’s waterfront amphitheatre.

With fully functional inpatient and recovery units, as well as operating rooms, the Centre is now prepared to significantly expand the Champalimaud Foundation's capacity to treat pancreatic cancer patients. With a dedicated team of specialists in the treatment and research of this type of cancer, the Centre's mission is to deliver the highest standard of clinical care.

We are a fundamentally visual and social species, and being able to almost instantly recognise particular faces, as well as facial cues, are crucial tools for interacting with our conspecifics and navigating our complex social world.

This congress reaffirmed the collaboration between the two countries in the research and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, a condition with a higher incidence in aging societies like those of Spain and Portugal, and with a profound economic and social impact.

The laureates of the 2024 António Champalimaud Vision Award are researchers Margaret Livingstone, Nancy Kanwisher, Doris Tsao (from the United States) and Winrich Freiwald (Germany) for their innovative contributions to understanding the neural mechanisms underlying facial recognition.  
 
The collective work carried out by these researchers has led to significant advances in the field of visual neuroscience, demonstrating how the brain processes and recognises faces, a fundamental aspect of social interaction and human cognition.