We are living through a new period, the bearer of deep changes in the political, academic, pedagogical and scientific policies of the University of Lisbon.
And therefore, also, in our Faculty of Medicine, where the dawn of this new era is increasing responsibility, by coming to us with high expectations of success and very low prospects of failure.

The new aspects are the organisational models of our different governing bodies and the personalities who will take on the presidency of the scientific and pedagogical councils, with it being clear that Professor José Fernandes e Fernandes will remain at the helm of the institution.
This is an important fact, because the project that has begun now, which has far-reaching academic relevance and enormous scientific potential, would find difficulty in being taken on now by someone else who, despite having the same motivation, would not have the same knowledge of the moment, and even less of the times and the paths that brought us here.
However, we should be alert to one thing: the Dean cannot be alone, because all of us are not too many to successfully steer the enormous ship we now have in our hands, and because the winds we have to face will not be favourable.

In structural terms, with the Faculty Assembly, a new organ with great significance and institutional weight, the deepest change will be felt in the Scientific Council.
The change is on the conceptual model, the organization philosophy and the regimenting, which grants prospects and scopes that are diametrically different to what I have just left after five years of mission and service as its president.

Now that the Plenary Council has finished, the Scientific Council will be operationally reduced to being an organ corresponding to that which was until now called the Coordinating Committee.
I fully agree with this change, and for this reason I wholeheartedly collaborated in the reformulation of these perspectives, as well as in the regulations of the Faculty that recognises a more operational Scientific Council, with greater institutional weight in the governing of the Faculty.

Its new form, in which, more than changes of principle, it follows different criteria in recruiting its members, such as including researchers, makes it more efficient in responding to a need for reinforcing the scientific dimension, which must be its main concern, while the new regulations make it more agile, optimising its action and capacity to respond to the academic needs that will arise.

Yet I believe that its guiding line will remain focused on the academic evolution, the development of scientific dimension and capacities, as well as on the reinforcing of its internationalization aiming at our rising on the global academic ranking, making us a stronger, more recognized and disputed institution.

In previous mandates the Scientific Council was able to start a recovery of our pedagogical capacity, ending the zero percent contracts for teachers. Besides not being very dignifying for the FMUL, this was a situation that clearly reduced our teaching capacities.
It was also possible to take the first steps towards reinforcing the academic dimension of Clinical Medicine.
It was possible to begin a recovery of the greatly disproportional relationship of the PhDs in the areas of Basic and Biomedical Sciences with regard to the Clinical Sciences, an aim that received two strong and crucial supports over the last two years.

The first step was taken by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, with the Intern PhD Programmes. Due to our having understood the importance of this initiative, the Scientific Council supported and was involved in the project from the outset.

I am very pleased to see that it has been brought about, with a very significant entry of Interns from the Santa Maria University Hospital and from the FMUL into the Gulbenkian programmes.
We are now sure that we were right, as we are about the importance of our own PhD programme, forming the Third Cycle of Studies, which is planned according to the BolognaAgreement and was recently approved.
The success of our initiatives is a fundamental, structuring aspect of the FMUL, and it is up to the Scientific Council to head the process and find attractive solutions in order to reinforce these programmes and projects.

Yet no matter how attractive these projects and programmes are one should not expect success to appear naturally and spontaneously.
We all know that this will not happen, and that in order for success to be sustained we have to start to nurture them and start to water them with determination and care as soon as students enter the Faculty.

It is necessary for us to show them and for our students to accept that their – our! – aim is to make them DOCTORS, committed to the enriching of their technical and scientific heritage, allowing them to be professionally competent, morally and ethically responsible for the accepting of coherent attitudes, of respect for the Human Condition of the patients they are called upon to treat.

It is our responsibility to show our students that teaching, clinical practice and research are no more than different times in the same professional activity, coming together in the academic perspective of Clinical Medicine.
The incentive for them to act like this is the seed of success, whether for our undergraduate programmes or, mainly, for our post-graduate ones.

The first step has been taken.
The major challenge will be that of an excellent and rich harvest, knowing that excellent students will always exist, but that they are the product of themselves and that what will matter to us, is the volume and quality of the fruit reaped, the result of solid, attractive and sustained institutional programmes.

I know that we will be capable of being up to the challenges, and that we will overcome the difficulties, fulfilling the aim of reinforcing the qualification and credentialisation, making the FMUL a competitive and sought-out centre for undergraduate and post-graduate training.
I am sure that in the new era the FMUL will carry out all its projects with the highest quality, ambition and efficiency, going beyond all our expectations and objectively and substantially implementing the Lisbon Centre of Academic Medicine.

Due to being certain of this, I wish all the presidents of all the governing organs of the faculty the greatest success in carrying out their mission.

Professor Henrique Bicha Castelo