IPP -Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto
INSTITUTO POLITÉCNICO DO PORTO (IPP) began its activity in 1985 as a result of the 1979 re-definition of the national education strategy which re-instated polytechnic colleges. IPP is the largest Polytechnic in Portugal, forms an academic community of over 15.000 students and has 7 schools in the fields of Engineering, Accounting and Administration, Management, Industrial Studies, Technology, Education, Music and Performing Arts and Health Sciences. IPP provides first and second cycle courses.
IPP began the implementation of its internationalisation policy in 1989. Cooperation activities involve over 30 countries from Europe, America, Africa and Asia. IPP has been participating in several programmes both as coordinator and partner.
Since 1852, Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP) has been a pioneer Institution in teaching and researching in engineering. Integrated at the Polytechnic Institute of Porto, ISEP is a school of reference in Portugal and aims to contribute to sustainable human development through the creation and transfer of knowledge. Located in a campus with 50 000 m2, ISEP is organized within a structure of departments and several student facilities: library, restaurant, canteen, bar, medical and counseling services, health club, travel agency and a congress center. Attended by more than 6000 students, ISEP lectures eleven first and second cycle degrees in different areas of engineering. The whole formative offer is designed in logic of applied knowledge, which favors "hands on" approaches – learning by doing – to better respond to the demands of a knowledge and creativity society. ISEP courses aim to form young professionals as well as to give complimentary and lifelong learning programmes to engineering professionals already established and that are looking for enrichment of their professional skills.
The ISEP houses nine research groups CIDEM: Research and Development Centre of Mechanical Engineering, CIETI: Innovation Centre in Engineering and Industrial Technology, CISTER: Investigation Centre in Reliable and Real-time Systems, GECAD: Investigation Group in Knowledge Engineering and Support to Decision, GICEC: Investigation Group and Consulting and Innovation in Civil Engineering, GILT: Graphics, Interaction & Learning Technologies, GRAQ-CEQUP-REQUIMTE: Chemical Reaction and Analysis Group, LSA: Autonomous Systems Laboratory and CMUP/LEMA: Mathematics Engineering Laboratory.
In 1983 a group of teachers and technicians from the ISEP Chemical Engineering Department created a Centre for Water Studies (CEA) that nowadays belongs to Porto Polytechnic Foundation. Its mission is to serve industry and society, having by main activities the physico-chemical and bacteriological analysis of water, sludge and solid wastes analysis and corrosion deposits analysis. This centre is developing its activity in the water, wastewater and solid wastes fields, paying a service to the surrounding community, and performing studies on wastewater treatments applied to specific toxic industrial wastewaters, as a means to transfer knowledge owned by the researchers, teachers and professionals that work or collaborate with this Centre.
Due to its nature and its usual connection with industries and enterprises in the water and wastewater sector, ISEP presents a natural ability for training water professionals. Also the information and communication technologies have been used in ISEP since they are available to the community so the use of e-learning like tools will most certainly be in our range of best skills.