WHO WE ARE
Mission & Values

CERENA-Centro de Recursos Naturais e Ambiente is a R&D Unit recognized by FCT and rated with Excellent.

CERENA's mission is to develop research at the highest level of excellence related to the sustainable use of natural resources, including energy, as well as their impact on the environment. CERENA uses an approach that is simultaneously integrative, multidisciplinary and multi-scale, from the molecular level to the planetary scale, where researchers from different scientific fields - earth, chemical and material engineering - converge towards the same objectives.

We are committed to finding solutions to current societal challenges, including those related to climate action, environment, health, raw materials and resources, efficiency and, safe, clean and efficient energy, in order to contribute to achieving the goals of sustainable development.

CERENA is a medium size R&D Unit with researchers from various scientific fields such as mining engineering, geosciences, chemical engineering, materials engineering and geophysics among others gathered either by a common field of application and/or by the methodological approaches. Researchers are organized in three main groups: Raw Materials, Energy and Environment.

Advanced training and initiation to research, internationalization, collaboration with the industry in search of more sustainable, eco-innovative and competitive engineering solutions from a circular economy perspective, and promotion of scientific culture are our objectives. 

CERENA is hosted by two largest portuguese engineering schools: Instituto Superior Técnico from Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto and Instituto Superior Engenharia de Lisboa.

 

Executive Board
Coordination Board
Advisory Board

Jacques Védrine

JV
Emeritus Professor/ Research Director
Université Pierre et Marie Curie- Paris 6, France

Sevket Durucan

SD
Professor of Mining and Environmental Engineering
Imperial College London, UK

Sofia Calero

SC
Full Professor
Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
History

CERENA-Centro de Recursos Naturais e Ambiente was created in 2006, from the merging of three experienced research centres and groups of IST that were developing separately their activities in the areas of natural resources and the environment.

In 2006 CERENA was composed by three groups: GMPG - Modelling and Processing of Georesources Group, CMRP - Modeling of Petroleum Reservoirs Group, CEGEO - Geotechnics Group. Research carried on by these groups was specially focused on sciences and technologies for the characterization, evaluation and beneficiation of environmental and natural resources through the articulated and original use of specific methodologies (geophysics and geochemistry, geostatistics and multivariate data analysis, image analysis and pattern recognition, remote sensing and GIS, operations research, beneficiation processes), mineral resources exploitation, underground engineering works and the recovery of environmental systems. The motivation to merge these complementary groups was related to the strong affinity in their research domains and to join synergies that lead to relevant improvements in the research conditions and on the increase of their relative performance.

In 2013, CERENA decided to focus its strategy on the enlargement of the group in order to become a reference center in the three main areas of Energy, Raw Materials and Environment. Hence, CERENA experienced a new expansion that resulted from the affinity and complementary competences of other Centers and groups of researchers, namely: CEPGIST (Centro de Petrologia e Geoquímica, IST/ULisboa), CPQ (Centro de Processos Químicos, IST/ULisboa), IBB (Instituto de Biolotecnologia e Bioengenharia, IST/ULisboa) and CIGAR (Centro de Geo-Ambiente e Recursos, FEUP) and also a Seismology Group of ICIST (Instituto de Engenharia de Estruturas, Território e Construção, IST/ULisboa).