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”.

The Champalimaud Foundation installed a new 18-Tesla horizontal-bore MRI scanner, custom-built in Germany at the Pre-Clinical MRI Lab, a team led by Principal Investigator Noam Shemesh. The system is the strongest horizontal-bore MRI scanner constructed to date and is currently the only one of its kind.

“This is the most powerful system in the world for in-vivo imaging,” says Shemesh. “By combining an exceptionally strong magnetic field with signal-boosting cryogenic coils, this equipment enables capabilities that have not been available before.”

When Joaquim Teixeira first heard about the Champalimaud Foundation (CF), it wasn’t in the media or a job ad, it was through a friend, who then invited him for a Happy Hour. “There were maybe twenty people at most, but the atmosphere had gravity. You could sense that something meaningful was about to happen and you wanted to be part of it”, he recalls.

The story of Cátia Feliciano and the Champalimaud Foundation (CF) began when she was still finishing her PhD in Neurobiology at Duke University in Durham, in the United States (USA). With a broad smile, she states that her great passion has always been neuroscience, and that when she heard of the plans to build a large research centre in Lisbon dedicated to this field, returning to Portugal became a possibility.