IST- CERENA

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. 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).  

The former configuration of 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. Lately, research efforts have included methodologies to characterize and mitigate Natural and Technological Hazards.