The programme is under the responsibility of the Informatics Department (DI), which distinguishes itself by:
. The excellence of its research activities in a large spectrum of subjects and informatics sub-fields;
. The connection of different strategic knowledge areas such as bioinformatics and information technology applied to health and management sciences;
. The multiple collaborations carried on with several well-know international research and educational institutions;
. The ability to integrate PhD students in an organisational structure build upon research institutions, evaluated and funded by the FCT (Portugal main science funding agency), which by means of external evaluation stimulates the quality of scientific research.