By Instituto Superior Técnico
Publication Date: 2026-10-09 15:35:00
How do you determine how much computing capacity is needed, and when does the available information become outdated? Based on these questions, Tomás Fernandes, a Computer Science and Engineering master’s student at Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, developed his thesis, The Price of Blindness: Deciding Where the Information Is Fresh, which was recognised at the 4th edition of the KPMG Merit Award in Virtualization and Cloud Computing on September 25, 2026.
The project, developed as part of the Virtualization and Cloud Computing curricular unit, earned the student a prize of 2,500 euros. The proposal explores how “Artificial Intelligence can optimise the use of cloud computing resources,” focusing on identifying “when the information used by the systems is no longer current enough to support decisions regarding available resources.”
The award was announced at the end of a session featuring five-minute pitches, in which Tomás Fernandes’s classmates, Cristiano Pantea and Vasco Pires, also participated. Cristiano Pantea addressed the use of Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the case of Netflix, exploring solutions for storage, computing capacity, content processing, and recommendation generation. Meanwhile, Vasco Pires presented “The Engineering of Chaos,” a project focused on virtualization, elasticity, and the use of a digital twin to test scenarios involving cyberattacks and communication failures.
“The work produced…
