The first JunctionX Lisbon took place on 18–19 October 2025 at Técnico’s Oeiras campus: a 36-hour hackathon focused on artificial intelligence, finance and society. According to Técnico, around 20 students and young professionals took part, from Técnico and from other Portuguese and international institutions.
The challenges
- Glintt asked teams to bring large language models into internal processes for researching and organising information.
- Albatroz Engenharia challenged participants to use AI to detect invasive acacia trees in Portugal’s Mediterranean forests.
- Gulbenkian Institute for Molecular Medicine (GIMM) asked for ways to combine patents, scientific articles and internal data to assess the potential of emerging technologies.
The organisers reported that some partners wanted to contact teams about taking their solutions into production.
The winners
Team Três Mosqueteiros, made up of Duarte Pereira da Cruz, Daniel Borges and André Pagaime, all Computer Science and Engineering undergraduates at Técnico, won with an AI tool that uses satellite imagery and georeferenced data to identify and predict the spread of invasive acacia species in Portugal. The team received €500 and the opportunity to represent Técnico at Junction in Finland, where more than €50,000 in prizes were at stake.
A note on the project name: Técnico’s event report calls the winning project Chega d’Acácias, while its December 2025 article refers to it as Forest Guardian.
Bernardo Chagas, a mechanical engineering student, told Técnico that taking part was a way to put what he learns into practice beyond the classroom. His teammate Rui Guerra, a Data Science and Engineering master’s student, described the challenges as ambitious, demanding that the team learn and apply new things quickly.
Behind the event
JunctionX Lisbon 2025 was organised by Gradient, an association founded by Técnico Mathematics PhD students Diogo Franquinho and Diogo Andrade to bring academia and industry closer together and encourage entrepreneurship. It was supported by Técnico’s Oeiras campus, Oeiras City Council and business and technology partners. Diogo Franquinho, lead organiser and founder of the event, explained that Oeiras was chosen because it belongs to a business ecosystem built on collaboration and knowledge transfer.
Photographs of the event are available in Técnico’s photo gallery, linked below.