Instituto Superior de Agronomia

Instituto Superior de Agronomia (ISA), School of Agronomy – University of Lisbon, is a national and international renowned faculty of excellence for graduation and post-graduation studies in Agronomy, Forestry, Food Science, Landscape Architecture, Environment, Animal Production, Plant Protection, Economy and Rural Sociology and Botany and Biological Engineering.

Dynamic academic education and research and development have been a priority for the past 150 years. The faculty is currently ongoing an extensive reform that will be fully implemented by the coming year of 2008, with all graduation and post-graduation levels being in a European format.

The student population is over 1500 in three levels of studying, including post-doctoral research studies. The teaching staff consists of 145 teachers and 6 researchers, mainly PhDs and post-docs and is organised in 10 departments.

The school’s location is quite unique: situated in the heart of Lisbon, it spreads over a green wooded area of 100 hectares (250 acres) with various agronomic and forestry experimentations sites. This vast protected area, classified as of “Public Interest”, plays an important role in the city’s environmental balance and is a fundamental recreational landscape for Lisbon’s population.

It also includes a small conference centre with a 300-delegate capacity, an Exhibition Pavilion with a Victorian (iron/Eiffel-like) architecture, several gardens, rugby and football fields and other facilities all of which can also be used by the city community.

ISA is executive board of a European project: FIRE PARADOX. Francisco Rego is the coordinator of this project. The aim is to learn to live with fire.