One Hub, Many Opportunities: Inside the EIT Community in Portugal

We sat down with Carolina Sampaio Dinis, EIT Community Hub Officer for Portugal, shortly after the official launch of this new initiative, to explore how it is transforming the country’s innovation landscape. Carolina shares insights on her role in connecting local talent with Europe’s innovation networks, breaking down silos, and fostering cross-sector collaboration. Discover how this effort unlocks fresh opportunities and shapes innovation’s future in Portugal and beyond.

Before we dive in, could you please share a bit about your journey into the EIT Community and what inspired you to take on your current role?

When I first began working with the EIT Community, I was Innovation Lead at EIT Health InnoStars, which made sense, as my background is in health. But very quickly, I realised the true potential of the broader EIT Community: the opportunity to connect dots across Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) through what we now call the XKIC approach. I’ve been an advocate for this cross-sector collaboration from day one.

When the opportunity to become the EIT Community Officer for Portugal came up in late 2024, I didn’t hesitate, even knowing it would be a challenge to coordinate across all KICs as a single point of contact. What drew me was the chance to have a strategic, bird’s-eye view of the entire innovation ecosystem and make that ecosystem more accessible and impactful for people on the ground.

How do you define your role as an EIT Community Officer when presenting it to external stakeholders?

As EIT Community Officer, I represent the EIT Community Hub Portugal, a central coordination point that connects local stakeholders to all the opportunities the EIT Community offers. My role is to increase visibility, ensure timely dissemination of funding and collaboration calls, and strengthen the EIT Community’s presence across the country.

In practice, I act as a bridge between European innovation instruments and local needs. I work with all KICs to promote their programmes, connect with ecosystem players, and align communication efforts with national partners and EU objectives. It’s a role that blends strategy, diplomacy, and grassroots engagement, and most importantly, it brings Europe closer to Portuguese innovators.

The new EIT Community Hubs are designed to serve as one-stop shops for innovation support. How do you ensure these services are accessible and relevant to local talent, entrepreneurs, and public stakeholders? How do you collaborate with existing EIT actors in your country, and what do you see as the added value of having a dedicated EIT Community Officer on the ground?

Since stepping into this role, it’s become clear how critical it is to have someone local who understands the EIT Community architecture and speaks the language of the ecosystem on the ground.

Innovation actors in Portugal, particularly start-ups and smaller institutions, often don’t have the time or resources to navigate all the KICs, platforms, and calls. The Hub simplifies that complexity. Stakeholders don’t need to know which KIC to approach. They just explain where they are in their journey and what they’re looking for, and we connect the dots.

It’s like finding the perfect pair of jeans: without help, you may spend hours looking and still miss the best fit, especially when you don’t even know all the brands that exist. We make that discovery process faster, more efficient, and tailored.

Because I have visibility across all KICs, I can also identify opportunities people might not think of, like a digital health project benefiting from EIT Food or EIT Digital. That cross-KIC lens is where true innovation emerges, and the Hub is uniquely positioned to enable it. I also collaborate closely with national stakeholders, including the NCP and KIC representatives, to ensure alignment and avoid duplication.

Where do you see the greatest untapped potential for the EIT Community to create impact locally? What’s unique about your country’s innovation ecosystem that people often overlook?

Portugal is an ambitious and growing innovation ecosystem, but still fragmented in many ways. While Lisbon is now ranked as a Strong Innovator by the European Innovation Scoreboard 2025, there is untapped potential in our regional and outermost areas: places like Coimbra, Braga, the Azores, and Madeira. These are regions with strong academic institutions, active municipalities, and engaged citizens, but limited visibility at the European level.

The EIT Community has the opportunity to act as a catalyst for convergence. We can bring together local actors, often working in silos with limited resources, and connect them to each other and to EU-wide platforms. That includes helping policymakers shape agendas using insights from the EIT’s expert networks, and aligning national strategies with initiatives like the ERA Policy Agenda and Portugal’s new Life Sciences Strategy.

As EIT Community Officers, we also help innovators explore beyond their comfort zones. Someone working on a health solution may only look at EIT Health, unaware that EIT Food or EIT Digital might have relevant opportunities too. It’s our role to unlock those hidden synergies and make sure nobody is left behind just because they weren’t already “in the loop.”

Health is a strategic priority for Europe, and EIT Health has already been active in many EIT RIS countries, supporting local health innovators. How does your hub build on this foundation, and what opportunities do you find to strengthen impact through joint initiatives or increased visibility?

EIT Health has a strong footprint in Portugal, supporting start-ups, promoting hospital-based innovation, and collaborating with top universities. The EIT Community Hub doesn’t replace that work; we amplify it.

The Hub acts as an open coordination point, helping new actors access the EIT ecosystem, guiding them toward the right KIC, and building bridges across sectors. Health is inherently cross-cutting: it intersects with digitalisation, food systems, mobility, and climate. That’s where the Hub adds value by facilitating XKIC collaborations and ensuring that health innovators don’t work in isolation.

We also increase visibility. When a pilot or partnership happens in Portugal, we help make sure it’s seen both nationally and across Europe. And by staying in close contact with policymakers, we’re able to align EIT Health’s work with national reform efforts in health and science, such as those now taking shape under Portugal’s new Agency for Research and Innovation.

In essence, the Hub helps EIT Health scale its impact, not just in numbers, but in depth, reach, and strategic alignment.

Can you highlight a local initiative, start-up or partnership you’ve seen recently that impressed you – something reflecting the spirit of cross-sector collaboration and European potential? 

One initiative that truly reflects this spirit is the Patient Innovation Accelerator, developed under the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Programme in partnership with Nova Medical School, Nova SBE, and the Patient Innovation platform.

What’s remarkable is its civic origin: many of the start-ups supported are founded by patients or caregivers addressing their own challenges. The programme blends academic excellence, user-driven design, and entrepreneurial mentorship, and even includes residencies at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

In April 2025, six Portuguese start-ups joined the Pittsburgh immersion phase, working with mentors on regulatory strategies, market entry, and global scalability. It’s a textbook case of European-local-global synergy, and a model for how cross-sector collaboration can lead to life-changing innovation.

It embodies what the EIT Community aims to support: local solutions with the potential to scale across Europe and beyond, powered by diverse partnerships.

The launch of the EIT Community Hub in Portugal marks an important milestone. What does this development mean for the local innovation ecosystem, and how do you envision the hub enhancing collaboration between Portuguese stakeholders and the broader EIT Community across Europe?

The launch of the EIT Community Hub marks a structural milestone, not just a symbolic one. For the first time, Portugal has a dedicated coordination mechanism that connects innovators, researchers, entrepreneurs, corporates and public institutions to the full scope of EIT opportunities.

Where do you think innovation in your country is heading over the next few years, and how can the EIT Community help shape that future?

 Portugal is heading toward a future defined by digital transformation, sustainability, and health resilience. According to the European Innovation Scoreboard, we’ve shown one of the strongest improvements since 2018. The next big leap will come from connecting fragmented innovation capacity into a more integrated national effort.

The government’s 2025–2030 innovation roadmap, alongside Portugal’s position paper for the FP10 framework, highlights strategic priorities like AI, green tech, life sciences, and space. It also calls for greater inclusion of SMEs, newcomers, and regional actors, areas where the EIT Community can make a real difference.

The EIT Community Hub supports this evolution by expanding access to the European innovation space, particularly for new players such as SMEs and regional actors who often face barriers to entry. It also plays a key role in enabling cross-sector collaboration, especially through XKIC initiatives that align with Portugal’s national priorities in areas like health, sustainability, and digital transformation. Additionally, the Hub contributes to policy alignment by connecting national agencies with EIT initiatives, helping to co-design and scale strategic opportunities that reinforce both national and European innovation agendas.

In short, Portugal’s innovation is becoming more mature and the EIT Community is a key enabler of that maturity.

For more details visit EIT Community Hub in Portugal .