Thinking about the past and how it shaped the present is never simple. But Zach Mainen, who has been here since day one, was a natural person to revisit the “Then and Now” of the Champalimaud Foundation (CF). We spoke about what it meant to take on a new and unpredictable project, and how the dream of a small group gradually became reality. I hope this story inspires you to step into the unknown and to trust that even when the future feels uncertain, it can still unfold into something remarkable.

Maria João Villas-Boas has been close to the Champalimaud Foundation (CF) since its early days. “I was fascinated, truly fascinated,” she told me as I asked when she had first heard about it. She had been following Leonor Beleza's work in the press, and the clarity of her clear vision for the CF made a lasting impression.

One phone call set everything in motion. It changed Leonor Beleza’s life and ultimately shaped the lives of countless others who would one day find their way to the Champalimaud Foundation (CF). It was not just a phone call, of course, but the culmination of everything Leonor had built over decades of public service, women's rights advocacy, political experience and a deep belief that institutions exist to serve people.

Megan Carey visited Portugal for the first time in August 2005. She and her husband, Michael Orger, had been invited to a wedding, and a Portuguese friend (André Valente) had promised to show them all the good things that Lisbon had to offer. At the time, Megan was a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard Medical School. Amidst some difficulty finding the Capela de São Jerónimo, the discomfort of walking in high heels on the traditional Portuguese cobblestones, and the heat, she remembers rolling her eyes when Mike first suggested: "Lisbon is incredible, one day we should live here!" 

Adam was one of the investigators who helped shape the early days of the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown and the Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme.

He was an innovator in the truest sense: a scientist who built microscopes, created tools like Bonsai and Harp, and pushed the boundaries of what could be done through radical collaboration. He brought joy, curiosity, and generosity to every interaction, and he had an extraordinary gift for bringing people together.

Even after moving to London, Adam kept a special and enduring connection to the Champalimaud Foundation.

Vision is central to how humans navigate the world, whether recognizing a familiar face in a photo or driving to a family dinner. For Artificial Intelligence (AI), however, even minor visual distortions, such as changes in brightness, contrast, or subtle perturbations, can cause object recognition algorithms to fail. Bridging this performance gap has been a major challenge in machine learning.

As we were wrapping up an earlier conversation with Champalimaud Foundation (CF) Clinical Director Professor António Parreira, I mentioned that there would be a sister article featuring one of his colleagues, Joe Paton, Director of Neuroscience Research at CF. The plan was to ask the same questions, more or less, to explore whether the cultural outlooks of the clinical and research branches aligned after 20 years. I invited António Parreira to open Joe’s interview with a question.

When António Parreira joined the Champalimaud Foundation (CF) more than a decade ago, the place was still more vision than institution. The building stood ready, white limestone gleaming by the river, but inside, there was little activity. “When I arrived, there were just two of us – two doctors,” he recalls. “It was too small then to think of a community.”

The Champalimaud Foundation (CF) has the advantage of housing a research institute and a clinic under the same roof. Collaboration opportunities are everywhere, and from the start Henrique Veiga-Fernandes made the most of them. He's been linking research and clinic, collaborating with health professionals, and hopes to expand these while inspiring others to do the same.

When Maria João Cardoso arrived at the Champalimaud Foundation (CF) in 2011, the building was almost empty. “There was almost no one there”, she recalls. “It was a ghost institution that progressively came to life”.