Diana Sousa a PhD student working on DeST was the top Ciências ULisboa student awarded with a merit scholarship for their work in 2018/2019 academic year. Diana Sousa curricular classifications was the best of the Ciências ULisboa student universe. At the time, Diana was second-year student of the Master on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics at ULisboa and the study-plan consisted of developing a relation extraction tool in the context of the DeST project: https://dest.rd.ciencias.ulisboa.pt/2019/06/12/thesis-extracting-phenotype-gene-relations-from-biomedical-literature-using-distant-supervision-and-deep-learning/

The classifications are not only a measure of the quality of their research work but also of the quality of the research hosted by the DeST project, even at a junior level.

Merit scholarships are awarded by public and private higher education institutions to students with exceptional success in accordance with the Merit Scholarship Regulation for Students of Higher Education Institutions. To be considered of exceptional success the students must have obtained approval in all curricular units that are part of the study plan of the curricular year, and the average of the classifications in those curricular units have to be equal or superior to Very Good (16). The merit scholarships are fully supported by the budget of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education.

More: https://www.lasige.di.fc.ul.pt/node/3732