Universidade do Minho

The University of Minho is located in the Minho region of Northern Portugal, a region with an extremely strong tradition of vibrant enterprise, essentially of small and medium-sized businesses. UMinho has two campi located 20 km apart: one in Braga and the other in Guimarães.

The city of Braga has a centuries-old affiliation with Culture and the Arts, and is firmly established in the service industry sector. It is here, in this city, that the following institutes and schools are installed: the Institutes of Arts and Humanities; Social Sciences; and Child Studies; the Schools of Sciences; Health Sciences; Nursing; and Law, as well as some Engineering areas.

The city of Guimarães, often referred to as the birth place of the nation, is dominated by the manufacturing sector with a strong investment in the Textile and Clothing, Metallurgy and Shoemaking Industries. The campus of Azurém, Guimarães, is home to the School of Engineering, and the courses of Architecture, Fashion Design and Marketing, Geography and Planning, and Applied Mathematics.

The Polymer Engineering Department (DEP) was founded in 1977 to support the Portuguese plastics industry through a specific graduation course and the creation of a group of experts in Polymer Engineering. Currently, DEP is involved in several graduation courses in which the properties and processing of polymeric materials are studied at different levels and within different perspectives.The DEP is also concerned in some Post-Graduation Courses, in R&D in Polymer Engineering Science and in consultancy and industrial development activities for the polymer processing industry and for the plastics industry equipment and injection mould makers. The academic staff comprises 26 elements. The technical and administrative support is assured by 9 staff elements and there are more than 100 researchers at Post-Graduate level currently working in DEP. The activity of the DEP is mainly centered in the Campus of Azurém (Guimarães) of UMinho. However, the biomaterials research group and some teaching facilities are based in the other campus of the same university (Campus of Gualtar, Braga). The Department has excellent and extensive experimental facilities, ranging from processing equipment (extruders, injection-moulding machines, etc,) to highly sophisticated characterization equipment (rheometrical, calorimetric, mechanical and thermal characterization equipment, X-ray diffraction, electron microscopy, optical microscopy and many other spectrometry techniques). The Rheology group of DEP carries its main activity within the Processing Studies Division, mainly in the areas of Rheology for Macromolecular Technology (Complex polymer-based materials: polymer blends and composites, On-line monitoring and control of extrusion-based processes, Environmental Rheology and Processing), Extensional Rheology (Rupture behaviour of viscoelastic systems, Linear and non-linear viscoelasticity in extensional flows), Microrheology, Microfluidics and Microprocessing. Most of this work is performed in collaboration with other scientific and academic institutions worldwide and with companies, both national and international.