[Interview] IEEE EMBS ISEL SB 2019/2020

Question: Hi, Mariana and Tomás. How do you rate last year? What activities did you develop in SB Chapter? What kind of activities did you end up not doing?
Answer: The last year we didn’t have any role in the direction of the student branch chapter, but we can say that IEEE in ISEL was not developed at all for other areas beyond biomedical engineering. The Student Branch of last year developed a workshop about poster publishing and entrepreneurship, and also the ENBENG, which was the 6th IEEE Portuguese meeting in bioengineering.

Question: How is your organization in the student branch and student branch chapter? Do you have any kind of relationship with other student groups in your faculty?
Answer: Our direction of the student branch has several departments with collaborators from different courses. Now the only student branch chapter that exists is the biomedical one. We consider that we have a very good relationship with all student branch.

Question: What potential activities would you like to develop with other student branches and with the Portuguese EMBS chapter?
Answer: We would like to organize some lectures and speeches about the operation of new hospital equipment, genetic engineering or implants and prostheses. We consider that a few workshops related with artificial intelligence would also be an interesting theme.

Question: What are the main advantages you recognize from belonging to IEEE?
Answer: The main advantages that we recognize are the possibility of having access to magazines/newspapers about articles and scientific information, and also the possibility of bringing well connected and important people on our study field.

Question: Biomedical engineering is in vogue. How do you evaluate the Portuguese context in the area? What do you think will be the most developed sub-areas of biomedical engineering in the coming years?
Answer: For what we see, in Portugal, biomedical engineering isn’t developed as in other countries. We can say that sub-areas that will increase in the next years are the ones related with nervous system and stem cells.

Question: What are the main difficulties that you chapter has felt? What do you think are your main strengths for your chapter? Do you think the reformulation of some masters and extinction of integrated masters could affect the dynamics of higher education?
Answer: All of us are from the first year of the bachelor’s in biomedical engineering in ISEL. As the first generation has not been easy to conciliate the academic studies with the student chapter. We consider ourselves hard-working and determinate people. In our opinion integrated masters have some advantages such as not being able to choose our master in a different subject of our bachelor. We might do a bachelor’s in biomedical engineering and in its course figure it out we want to discover more information about a subject such as informatic engineering.