Abstract
New systems with innovative design to perform measurements combining electrochemistry and surface plasmon resonance (ESPR) are currently a need to overcome the limitations of existent market solutions and expand the research possibilities of this technology. The main goal of this work was to develop a new cell to increase ESPR practical applications in several fields. To do so, a homemade SPR cell, fabricated by 3D-printing technology, was adapted for this purpose by incorporating the conventional 3-electrodes to perform the electrochemical experiments. The developed cell was fully compatible with commercial SPR substrates. After optimization of the homemade ESPR setup to perform the combined electrochemical and SPR measurements, two main applications were explored in this work. The first was the use of ESPR technology as straightforward tool to simultaneously investigate the electrical and optical properties of conducing/nonconducting polymers electrosynthetized on the SPR platforms. The conducting polymer poly(thionine) was used in this work for proof-of- concept. The second application envisaged the use of ESPR approach for simple electrodeposition of materials with enhanced plasmonic properties for sensitivity enhancement of SPR biosensors. For validation of the concept, graphene oxide (GO) was electrochemically reduced on gold substrates aiming to evaluate the plasmonic properties of graphene-modified sensing surfaces.

Abstract
Involving people in urban planning offers many benefits, but current methods are failing to get a large number of citizens to participate. People have a high participation barrier when it comes to public participation in urban planning - as it requires a lot of time and initiative, only a small non-diverse group of citizens take part in governmental initiatives. In this paper, a product is developed to make it as easy as possible for citizens to get involved in construction projects in their community at an early stage. As a solution, a public screen is proposed, which offers citizens the opportunity to receive information, view 3D models, vote and comment at the site of the construction project via smartphone - the solution was named Parcitypate. To explain the functions of the product, a prototype was created and tested. In addition, concepts for branding, marketing, ethics, and sustainability are presented.

Abstract
Our contemporary society necessitates professionals equipped with 21st-century skills. Disciplines within Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (known as STEAM) have been particularly effective in fostering these skills. However, when considering students with disabilities, especially those with intellectual or developmental disabilities (IDD), this assertion often falls short. In this context, the RoboSTEAMSEN project emerges as an initiative designed to enhance educational processes by providing teachers of IDD students with the necessary resources to promote STEAM engagement. The project proposes the use of active learning methodologies and robotics to achieve this goal. The primary objective of the project is realized through several strategies: understanding the needs of students with disabilities and adapting the use of robotics and active learning methodologies accordingly; training teachers in the use of these resources; and creating a platform to exchange experiences, resources, lessons learned, tools, case scenarios, etc., while reaching other potential stakeholders such as caregivers and policymakers. The main outcomes of the project are teacher training programs and the development of associated competencies, tools to identify and classify resources for the students, and technological platforms to ensure the sustainability of the project once it concludes.

Abstract
Early identification of failures is a critical task in predictive maintenance, preventing potential problems before they manifest and resulting in substantial time and cost savings for industries. We propose an approach that predicts failures in the near future. First, a deep learning model combining long short-term memory and convolutional neural network architectures predicts signals for a future time horizon using real-time data. In the second step, an autoencoder based on convolutional neural networks detects anomalies in these predicted signals. Finally, a verification step ensures that a fault is considered reliable only if it is corroborated by anomalies in multiple signals simultaneously. We validate our approach using publicly available Air Production Unit (APU) data from Porto metro trains. Two significant conclusions emerge from our study. Firstly, experimental results confirm the effectiveness of our approach, demonstrating a high fault detection rate and a reduced number of false positives. Secondly, the adaptability of this proposal allows for the customization of configuration of different time horizons and relationship between the signals to meet specific detection requirements. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2025.

Abstract
This paper presents a matheuristic solution algorithm to solve the well-known resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP). The problem makes use of a restricted neighbourhood method using an activity selection and a search space restriction module and implements them as two alternative search algorithms. The first algorithm makes use of the best-performing components of the branch-and-bound procedures from the literature, and embeds them into a greedy neighbourhood search. The second matheuristic implements the exact branch-and-bound procedures into a known and well-performing meta-heuristic search algorithm. Computational experiments have been carried out on seven different datasets consisting of 10,000+ project instances. Experiments reveal that the choice of exact algorithm is key in finding high-quality solutions, and illustrate that the trade-off between selecting an activity set size and search space restriction depends on the specific implementation. The computational tests demonstrate that the matheuristic discovered 24 new best known solutions that could not be found by either a meta-heuristic or an exact method individually. Moreover, a new benchmark dataset has been proposed that can be used to develop new matheuristic search procedures to solve the problem consisting of 461 instances from the literature.

Abstract
This paper aims to provide an overview of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on control engineering education worldwide. The authors, who are educators in the control education field from various countries across all continents, first summarize their experiences to present a global perspective on the different solutions adopted in control education during the pandemic. Afterwards, collected information from the international community through a questionnaire enabled insightful comparisons between pre-pandemic and during-pandemic educational resources and methods, which are shared in this paper. The feedback from the authors’ experiences, along with the questionnaire responses, serves as a valuable resource for learning and improving teaching activities. The questionnaire was distributed among the international control engineering community in collaboration with the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) to explore the diverse alternatives employed globally for conducting online educational activities during the pandemic. These activities include methodologies, tools, theoretical exercises, laboratory experiments, exam types, simulators, and software for online lecturing.