GECAD ( “Grupo de Investigação em Engenharia do Conhecimento e Apoio à Decisão” (Knowledge Engineering and Decision Support Research Center) is a R&D unit operating in the areas of Artificial Intelligence, Knowledge Based Systems, and Decision Support Systems. At the end of 1993 some researchers of ISEP/IPP (Institute of Engineering – Polytechnic of Porto) decided to establish their research activities in this institute, in GECAD. This center was responsible for the first projects in the Portuguese Polytechnic Schools supported by R&D foundations. 

GECAD involves more than 70 researchers, 37 with PhD, and participated in more than 50 R&D projects. GECAD was classified with VERY GOOD level in the last FCT (Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation) evaluation.

Recently, GECAD was the first Portuguese R&D unit settled in the Polytechnic subsystem to apply for achieving the Associated Laboratory level (the high level in Portugal) together with CENTRIA (Center of Artificial Intelligence, in the New University of Lisbon).