Polytechnic of Porto - School of Engineering (ISEP) is a public

polytechnic Polytechnic is most commonly used to refer to schools, colleges, or universities that qualify as an institute of technology or vocational university also sometimes called universities of applied sciences. Polytechnic may also refer to: Educatio ...

higher learning ''Higher Learning'' is a 1995 American drama film written and directed by John Singleton and starring an ensemble cast. The film follows the changing lives of three incoming freshmen at the fictional Columbus University: Malik Williams ( Omar Epp ...

and research

engineering Engineering is the use of scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad range of more speciali ...

institute, located in the city of

Porto Porto or Oporto () is the second-largest city in Portugal, the capital of the Porto District, and one of the Iberian Peninsula's major urban areas. Porto city proper, which is the entire municipality of Porto, is small compared to its metropo ...

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of th ...

. ISEP is divided in 8 departments, with an emphasis on applied science and technology. ISEP was founded by the minister

Fontes Pereira de Melo António Maria de Fontes Pereira de Melo GCTE KGF (; Lisbon, 8 September 1819 – 22 January 1887) was a Portuguese statesman and engineer. He was a leading parliamentarian and political figure of his time. Among other posts held, he was six ...

in 1852 as ''Escola Industrial do Porto'' (Porto School of Industry) to support the industrialization of

, and some time later upgraded to ''Instituto Industrial do Porto'' (Porto Institute of Industry). Since 1989, was grouped with other schools in the

Polytechnic Institute of Porto The Instituto Politécnico do Porto (Polytechnic University of Porto), also referred to as Politécnico do Porto (Porto Polytechnic) and P.PORTO (since 2016, for naming and branding purposes), is a composition of multiple polytechnic schools base ...

. Its motto is ''Saber Fazer'' — "Know-how". Today, ISEP is one of the biggest and best known engineering schools in Portugal, with well over 6000 students and 500 faculty members. It has research facilities for

real-time systems Real-time computing (RTC) is the computer science term for Computer hardware, hardware and computer software, software systems subject to a "real-time constraint", for example from Event (synchronization primitive), event to Event (computing), ...

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech ...

knowledge based system A knowledge-based system (KBS) is a computer program that reasons and uses a knowledge base to solve complex problems. The term is broad and refers to many different kinds of systems. The one common theme that unites all knowledge based systems ...

s, and

decision support system A decision support system (DSS) is an information system that supports business or organizational decision-making activities. DSSs serve the management, operations and planning levels of an organization (usually mid and higher management) and ...

s, some of them internationally recognized as leading R&D centers (e.g
GECADCISTERLSA
as accredited by the ''Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia'' of the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education.

History

The institution has had several names and different roles since its foundation in 1852:''Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto - Identidade de uma escola com raízes oitocentistas'', Author: Luís Alberto Marques Alves, Professor at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Porto
, in ''Sísifo - Revista de Ciências da Educação'' (University of Lisbon) * 1852 The ''Escola Industrial do Porto'' (School of Industry) is founded by the minister

, during the reign of King

Pedro V of Portugal , house = Braganza , house-type = House , father = Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha-Koháry , mother = Queen Maria II of Portugal , birth_date = , birth_place = , death_date = , death_place = Necessidad ...

. * 1864 The school was transformed into an Institute, as ''Instituto Industrial do Porto'' (Institute of Industry), and was integrated into the new Industrial sector on the frame of the '' Instituto Industrial de Lisboa'' established in

Lisbon Lisbon (; pt, Lisboa ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 544,851 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km2. Lisbon's urban area extends beyond the city's administrative limits w ...

. * 1905 It was allowed to provide

higher education Higher education is tertiary education leading to award of an academic degree. Higher education, also called post-secondary education, third-level or tertiary education, is an optional final stage of formal learning that occurs after compl ...

(''ensino superior''). * 1918 The institute was reorganized and transformed again into a non-higher education technical institute of intermediate education (''ensino médio'') by the minister Azevedo Neves reforms. It started conferring the titles of ''engenheiro auxiliar'' (auxiliary engineer) by law ''Lei 1 638 de 23 de Julho de 1924'' in 1924, and ''agente técnico de engenharia'' (technical agent of engineering) from 1926 onwards. * 1975 After the

Carnation Revolution The Carnation Revolution ( pt, Revolução dos Cravos), also known as the 25 April ( pt, 25 de Abril, links=no), was a military coup by left-leaning military officers that overthrew the authoritarian Estado Novo regime on 25 April 1974 in Lisbo ...

of 1974, the institute was upgraded to higher education status and started to award 4-year ''bacharelato'' degrees conferring the title of technical engineer (''engenheiro técnico''). Integrated into the university sector and renamed ''ISEP - Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto'' (Superior Institute of Engineering), it conferred technical engineering degrees while the universities awarded 5-year engineering degrees. * 1989 By force of law ''Decreto-Lei n.º 389/88, de 25 de Outubro'' (1988), ISEP was integrated into the newly created

sector and made part of the

. It started to award exclusively 3-year ''bacharelato'' degrees conferring the title of technical engineer (''engenheiro técnico'') and CESE (''Curso de Estudos Superiores Especializados'') courses conferring the DESE (''Diploma de Estudos Superiores Especializados'') diploma, a complementary diploma to the ''bacharelato'' degree. * 1998 ISEP started to award ''licenciatura bietápica'' degrees (3-year ''bacharelato'' plus 2 extra years conferring the ''licenciatura'', equivalent to the ''licenciatura'' ( licentiate) degree which until then had been awarded only by the universities). * 2004 ISEP seen its first engineering ''licenciatura'' courses accredited by the '' Ordem dos Engenheiros'', the Portuguese engineering association. The first accredited courses were in chemical engineering and electronic engineering. Beyond the public universities, only Lisbon (ISEL) and Porto (ISEP) state-run polytechnic engineering institutions had accredited courses in the ''Ordem dos Engenheiros'' in 2006. * 2007 Like the other Portuguese polytechnic institutions, on the frame of the Bologna process, ISEP was allowed to start awarding independent masters' degrees as a second cycle of study after the initial 3-year first cycle which grant a ''licenciatura''. Previously, since 2002, it only awarded master's degrees in some fields with the support of

Instituto Superior Técnico Instituto Superior Técnico MHSE • MHIP (IST, also known colloquially as Técnico, and stylized TÉCNICO LISBOA) is a public school of engineering and technology, part of University of Lisbon. It was founded as an autonomous school in 1911 ...

a university engineering institution from Lisbon. * 2014 ISEP becomes the Higher Education Institution in Portugal with the most number of study plans certified by EUR-ACE standards, accredited degrees in Engineering in the

European Higher Education Area The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) was launched in March 2010, during the Budapest-Vienna Ministerial Conference, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Bologna Process. As the main objective of the Bologna Process since its ince ...

. * 2017 ISEP's Msc in Informatics Engineering is the first master's degree program in Portugal accredited by the United States-based

ABET The ABET (incorporated as the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc.) is a non-governmental organization that accredits post-secondary education programs in applied and natural sciences, computing, engineering and engineering ...

, assigned to the Engineering Accreditation Commission (EAC), a trusted accreditation for employers worldwide attesting that graduates are prepared to enter the workforce as licensed

professional engineer Regulation and licensure in engineering is established by various jurisdictions of the world to encourage life, public welfare, safety, well-being, then environment and other interests of the general public and to define the licensure process thro ...

Campus

ISEP's campus spans approximately 50,000 square meters in ''Pólo Universitário'', near São João Hospital. Dormitories and some of student life facilities are located outside the campus, but almost all classes are held on campus. ISEP campus was initially located in the central Porto and moved to current one in the 1960s.

Departments

ISEP is divided into different schools within its campus: * DEC -

Civil engineering Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including public works such as roads, bridges, canals, dams, airports, sewa ...

* DEG -

Geotechnical engineering Geotechnical engineering is the branch of civil engineering concerned with the engineering behavior of earth materials. It uses the principles of soil mechanics and rock mechanics for the solution of its respective engineering problems. It ...

* DEQ -

Chemical engineering Chemical engineering is an engineering field which deals with the study of operation and design of chemical plants as well as methods of improving production. Chemical engineers develop economical commercial processes to convert raw materials in ...

* DEE -

Electrical Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described ...

and

Computer engineering Computer engineering (CoE or CpE) is a branch of electrical engineering and computer science that integrates several fields of computer science and electronic engineering required to develop computer hardware and software. Computer engineers n ...

* DEM -

Mechanical engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and mathematics principles with materials science, to design, analyze, manufacture, ...

* DEI -

Software engineering Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development. A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term '' ...

and

Computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

* DMA -

Mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

* DFI -

Physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which ...

* DOG -

Management Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business. Management includes the activitie ...

Studies

Following the Bologna Process, higher education study plans are divided into 1st cycle BSc (3 years), 2nd cycle MSc (2 years). BSc *

Automotive Engineering Automotive engineering, along with aerospace engineering and naval architecture, is a branch of vehicle engineering, incorporating elements of mechanical, electrical, electronic, software, and safety engineering as applied to the design, manufac ...

Chemical Engineering Chemical engineering is an engineering field which deals with the study of operation and design of chemical plants as well as methods of improving production. Chemical engineers develop economical commercial processes to convert raw materials in ...

¹ *

Civil Engineering Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including public works such as roads, bridges, canals, dams, airports, sewa ...

* Electrical and Computer Engineering¹ * Electrical Engineering – Power Systems¹ * Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering^1* *

Software Engineering Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development. A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term '' ...

¹ *

Instrumentation Engineering and Metrology Instrumentation a collective term for measuring instruments that are used for indicating, measuring and recording physical quantities. The term has its origins in the art and science of scientific instrument-making. Instrumentation can refer t ...

Mechanical Engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and mathematics principles with materials science, to design, analyze, manufacture, ...

¹ * Medical Computing and Instrumentation Engineering *

Systems Engineering Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design, integrate, and manage complex systems over their life cycles. At its core, systems engineering utilizes systems thinki ...

MSc * Applied Mathematics (Finance and Engineering) *

¹ *

* Electrical and Computer Engineering¹ * Electrical Engineering – Power Systems¹ * Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering^1* * Informatics Engineering¹ ² *

¹ * Medical Computing and Instrumentation Engineering * Sustainable Energies (¹) EUR-ACE certification completed, (^1*) EUR-ACE certification ongoing. (²) US

-EAC accredited program