The international masters in Structural Analysis of Monuments and Historical Constructions (SAHC) of the School of Engineering of the University of Minho (EEUM) was awarded the European Prize on Cultural Heritage “Europa Nostra”, in the “Education, Training and Awareness” category. The masters programme – which has around 400 applications for an average of 35 available openings – is coordinated by Paulo Lourenço, Full Professor from the Department of Civil Engineering of the EEUM. The researcher received the award on 15th May 2017, in Turku, Finland, at a ceremony attended by the President of Europa Nostra, Maestro Plácido Domingo and the European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, Tibor Navracsics.
The SAHC is a one-year teaching project for students from all over the world, which aims to provide advanced training in conservation Engineering for built cultural heritage. This is a one-of-a-kind training programme in the world, when compared to countless general training courses in heritage conservation, because it combines different competences of European Universities of reference in the field of structural analysis and conservation of built cultural heritage.
This master’s degree is distinguished by its global reach, with students coming from 62 countries and with an average applicant age of 27 years-old, mainly from Europe, but also from the USA, Iran, China, Colombia, Canada and Mexico. The SAHC has been funded by the European Commission for the last ten years, under the coordination of the University of Minho, in Guimarães, and counted with the partnership of the Czech Technical University in Prague (Czech Republic), the Polytechnic University of Catalonia – Barcelona Tech (Spain), the University of Padua (Italy) and also with the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
The former graduates of the SAHC have earned several grants from the Getty Foundation (USA) and won multiple awards for their dissertations. In addition, the students of this master’s degree have been hired by leading international consultancy companies and built heritage specialised firms, and have been selected for doctoral programmes in the best international universities.
