The Oeiras Campus of Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, will host a new data center as part of an investment exceeding 20 million euros by ULisboa. This initiative aims to create one of the “largest digital infrastructures in Portuguese higher education”. The project, which is funded by the Lisbon 2030 Regional Programme, aims to provide the University with advanced computing and artificial intelligence resources, strengthening its ability to respond to the “growing demands of research, innovation, and collaboration with companies”.

The new infrastructure will enable an increase in processing power and scientific data storage capacity, creating better conditions for accelerating research in various areas such as health, biotechnology, precision medicine, clinical research and the discovery of new medicines. The ULisboa schools, research centres and laboratories will now have access to computing resources tailored to the complexity and scale of current scientific projects.

There are also plans to create a sovereign cloud, which will enable data storage and processing within infrastructure managed by the University. This solution ensures high standards of security, control and information governance, which are particularly important in projects involving sensitive data.

In addition to providing direct research support, the infrastructure will serve ULisboa’s Innovation Ecosystem, strengthening collaboration with companies, startups, spin-offs and industrial partners, and helping to accelerate the transfer of knowledge from academia to society.

According to Luís Ferreira, Rector of Universidade de Lisboa, this investment represents “a decisive step towards strengthening ULisboa’s scientific and technological capacity and putting artificial intelligence, advanced computing and sovereign cloud computing at the service of research, innovation and society”. He also adds that the project positions ULisboa as “a university ready to address the major challenges in the fields of science, health, security and the digital economy”.

According to Alexandre Francisco, Vice-President of Técnico for Digital Technologies, “the creation of the new data center fulfills a strategic objective for Técnico. For several years, we have aimed to strengthen our capacity to host computing infrastructure”. By participating in this project run by ULisboa, it has been possible to expand “this capacity and contribute to a more resilient infrastructure that serves the entire School”, he adds.

The initiative follows the approval of the proposals ULISBOA CORE – Computational Omics for Resilient Economies and ULISBOA CORE+ – Sovereign AI4Science Cloud for Bio-Digital Data, developed jointly by Técnico, the Faculty of Sciences (Ciências), the Gulbenkian Institute for Molecular Medicine (GIMM) and ULisboa.

The project also provides for the construction of a second data centre on the Faculty of Sciences, in Cidade Universitária, with completion of the new infrastructure scheduled for October 2028.