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NOVA LINCS partners with Farfetch and OutSystems on cutting-edge research and innovation projects

Published in: Jun 2020

iFetch and GOLEM large-scale projects aim to deliver revolutionary artificial intelligence solutions in the context of collaborative industry-academy research between top Portuguese high-tech companies, NOVA LINCS, Carnegie-Mellon, and other national partners.

iFetch (Multimodal Conversational Agents for the Online Marketplaces), involving the NOVA Laboratory for Computer Science and Informatics at FCT NOVA, Instituto Superior Técnico and Carnegie Mellon University, is led by Farfetch.

iFetch proposes to research and deliver a new generation of task-oriented conversational agents able to interact with users using verbal and visual information in a seamless manner. iFetch aims to revolutionize e-commerce in the luxury fashion industry, leveraged by scientific advances in terms of multimodal conversational Artificial Intelligence agents.

Luís Carvalho, VP Architecture at Farfetch, states: “We have a multidisciplinary team with enormous skills and elements from renowned universities. Farfetch has already shown in other projects that it highly values this connection to the community, and I think it will do it again now in a project with the potential to revolutionize the online shopping experience of millions of consumers”. According to João Magalhães (PI at NOVA LINCS), iFetch “will tackle exciting challenges enabling multimodal interaction with AI agents, as people do in physical shops”.

Building up on the 10 years old partnership with OutSystems SA, also supported by the in-house collaborative research lab, the NOVA Laboratory for Computer Science and Informatics at FCT NOVA is joining GOLEM.

GOLEM (Automated Programming to Revolutionize App Development) is the most ambitious collaboration effort OutSystems has pursued with academic communities. The main goals of the three-year program are to automate programming and revolutionize the software development experience, ultimately allowing common citizen or non-expert business professionals to develop their own apps, and involves Carnegie Mellon, NOVA Laboratory for Computer Science and Informatics at Universidade Nova de Lisboa, and INESC-ID.

João Abril de Abreu, Innovation and University Relations Manager at OutSystems, says that GOLEM “illustrates how OutSystems continues to look to the future and support initiatives that will disrupt the app development market” and “reflects the work OutSystems has been doing building strong ties with strategically selected high-level universities and research institutions to boost the company’s ability to do top-quality research". According to João Costa Seco, PI of the project at NOVA LINCS, GOLEM "provides yet another exciting opportunity to leverage NOVA LINCS scientific research in programming languages and environments, bridging from low TRL activities towards short term impact and value creation".

iFetch and GOLEM are two of a few select large-scale collaborative research projects funded by Carnegie-Mellon Portugal partnership, partnering Portuguese companies, Portuguese universities and research institutions. The total funding of the two projects reaches the amount of 4.2M€.

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