Diana Delgado

Lusófona is the largest private university in Portugal. Established in 1989, it encompasses an integrated educational, research, and innovation ecosystem with campus and facilities spread across the whole country and internationally to the Portuguese-speaking community, reaching institutions in Brazil, Angola, Cape Verde, and Guinea-Bissau. Lusófona institutions gather more than 75,000 students. Lusófona excels in the manufacturing sector by combining academic excellence, applied research, and innovation, along with state‐of‐the‐art facilities (e.g., LabEGI, Deep Tech Lab, MovLab, and LabTEC) that facilitate effective knowledge transfer, practical applications, and strategic collaborations with our industry partners. Our Industrial Engineering Research Unit (https://www.rcm2.pt/) includes about 80 researchers who develop innovative solutions, using advanced analytical models and tools, to solve industrial challenges, namely in the following areas: Production Planning and Control Problems, Scheduling and Sequencing, Supply Chain, Transportation and Logistics, Energy and Resource Efficiency & Sustainability, Product and Process Design Optimization, Smart Manufacturing, Digital Twins & Industry 4.0, Quality Control, Maintenance and Reliability, Nanoengineering Core analytical competences include • Problem structuring and modeling approaches • Decision analysis (multicriteria, value, utility, risk, uncertainty, portfolio analyses) • Exact & Metaheuristic Optimization procedures (linear, integer, nonlinear, multiobjective, constraint programming, stochastic programming) • Network, Graphs, and Project Management • Prediction, Forecasting, Causal Inference, and Econometrics • Simulation (Monte Carlo, discrete-event, system dynamics, agents, cellular automaton, continuous) • Benefit-Cost and Risk Analyses • Business Intelligence • Artificial intelligence (machine learning, prediction, classification, clustering, neural networks, reinforcement learning) We coordinate and participate in several EU applied research projects with over 50 research centers, 20 universities, and 200 industrial organizations, both nationally and internationally. We offer a unique educational portfolio with 14 PhD programs and 89 Master’s programs, with a strong focus on Industrial Engineering and related fields, and provide continuing education, lifelong learning, and re-skilling and up-skilling tailored courses for industrial professionals.