On May 24, at the João Lobo Antunes Grand Auditorium, the 2018 Pulido Valente – Teaching Prize was awarded to the student Martim Trovão Pereira Bastos.

The ceremony was attended by the Chairman of the Pulido Valente Foundation, Engineer Rui Pulido Valente, for whom this Prize, “first awarded in 1993, was the first initiative taken in order to promote the Pulido Valente Foundation, followed by the Pulido Valente – Science Award.” It affirms the relationship between the Foundation and the Faculty and “celebrates a very important personality with close ties to the Faculty of Medicine.” He recalled that “this is the 26th time the Prize has been awarded, and that, every year, the Ceremony includes the participation of very important Speakers and that, in 2015, the guest speaker was actually the person who received the first Science Prize. There are very close ties between the Foundation and the Faculty and that closeness is celebrated annually with this Ceremony.” The ceremony was also attended by Professor Carlos Monjardino, Chairman of the Monjardino Foundation (Co-Sponsor of the 2018 Edition of the Professor Francisco Pulido Valente Teaching Prize), Professor Mamede de Carvalho, Professor Rui Victorino and, among others, Professor José Melo Cristino, Chairman of the Scientific Board of the FMUL and main organiser of the event.

For Professor Melo Cristino, this Prize “is very important to the Faculty for many reasons. First of all, because it is the oldest prize awarded to students in order to acknowledge their merit. It is awarded to the student with the best average in Medicine II, which is the subject that best corresponds to the Clinical Medicine chair, of which Professor Pulido Valente was Full Professor at the FMUL. So, it is a very relevant and very prestigious award!”

This year’s Guest Lecturer was Professor João Paulo André, from the University of Minho, with a presentation entitled «Disease in Opera,» revealing the extremely original connection between science and art.

Martim Trovão Pereira Bastos, the winner, confesses that, for him, winning this award is “an enormous source of pride, tremendous happiness and a great honour, but mainly a huge responsibility.” He wanted to thank “all those in attendance and especially the Pulido Valente Foundation and the Monjardino Foundation and also his second home, the Faculty of Medicine of Lisbon, and all the professors who, on a daily basis, teach the basic principles of Medicine and the empathy that those who wish to work as physicians must have.” He confessed that he intended to pursue his career in Internal Medicine because “in a way, also as a tribute to Professor Francisco Pulido Valente, Internal Medicine is the most challenging, cross-cutting and comprehensive area in terms of knowledge, which allows us to be full-time doctors who treat each patient as a whole. That will be quite a challenge!”

Martim Trovão Pereira Bastos

Ana Raquel Moreira

Editorial Team