LUMEN
For Higher Education
An academic intelligence platform

Light on every student.

Your data already knows who's at risk. Lumen tells your faculty in time to act.

Built by
Procimo and two academic researchers
Awarded
HETL Dubai 2025
Lumen · For Higher Education · 2026
The opening problem

Higher education has data. It does not have intelligence.

Every modern university collects more student data than it can read. Most of it serves administration. Almost none of it reaches the people making pedagogical decisions, in time to act.

Lumen · For Higher Education · 2026
The Discovery

We looked at one university's data. What we found could not be unseen.

A Portuguese university gave us 33 years of academic records, sociodemographic data, and questionnaire responses across 10,397 students. We didn't go in looking for a product. We went in to listen.

This is the first number we found.

More followed.
49 %
of students had considered dropping out at least once. Faculty couldn't see them. The data could.
Lumen · For Higher Education · 2026
What the data revealed

Six findings nobody had read.

The first year already knows who will finish.
Graduates leave year one with 14.7 units passed, 96% approval, average 13.1. Dropouts leave with 8 units, 72%, average 10. First-year variables predict the final outcome over 90% of the time.
Where students live with predicts how they finish.
Household composition correlates +0.41 with failures and −0.38 with completion. The student's home situation travels with them across every semester.
Overdue units are the earliest warning sign.
Students who repeatedly thought about dropping out carry 2.8 overdue units on average. The rest carry 0.7. A four-fold gap, statistically clear.
Gender shows up in the data, consistently.
Female students average 13.1 versus 12.2 for male. Fewer attempts per unit, fewer failures. The pattern holds across every programme analysed.
Faculty had continuous assessment wrong for years.
Students rate it 4.72 out of 5. Of 138 surveyed, 130 prefer it over final exams. The institution had assumed the opposite.
Students don't blame difficulty. They blame teaching.
Pedagogical methods are the top self-reported cause of failure, named in 14.3% of student responses. A signal pointed at course design, not student ability.
Lumen · For Higher Education · 2026
What you're not measuring

A number most universities don't have.

Most universities can't answer this with one number. Tuition lost. Completion-tied funding gone. Ranking exposure. Alumni base eroded. Each lives in a different system, calculated by a different team, if calculated at all.

Lumen does not compute that number for you. It tells you who you're about to lose, while you can still act on it.

Most universities don't compute this. They write it off.
The dropout your finance team writes off
Tuition × years remaining + Completion-tied funding + Ranking exposure + Alumni base eroded = ?
Now multiply by every cohort, every year, since you started counting.
Lumen · For Higher Education · 2026
Your number

Now compute yours.

Four inputs. The math is plain. Adjust the left-hand side to your reality, the right-hand side updates immediately. Most institutions never compute this number. The ones that do tend to invest differently in retention.

students
%
years
What it costs you
Dropouts per year 420
Cost of one dropout €2,788
Total cost, this year's dropouts €1,170,960
Saving of cutting dropouts by
€111,520
This is the conservative read: tuition plus completion-tied funding only. Ranking exposure, alumni base, and recruitment cost-per-acquisition would push the number higher.
Lumen · For Higher Education · 2026
From reactive response to predictive intervention

What if every faculty member could see what the data sees?

Not raw tables. Not BI dashboards built for finance. A working interface designed around pedagogical decisions, validated by the people who'd actually use it. That's what we built next.

Lumen · For Higher Education · 2026
What Lumen is

An intelligence layer for academic decisions.

Lumen reads the data your institution already collects. It turns it into a working interface for faculty, course coordinators, and academic leadership.

Module 01
University Universe
A live dashboard of your student universe. Counts of enrolled students, at risk, dropouts, transitions, in one view. Geographic map of where they come from and where they live. The first screen faculty open on a Monday morning.
Module 02
Entry Prediction
Risk profiles at the start of the course. Built from sociodemographic factors and course-level history. Surfaces students at entry, not at the end of semester one.
Module 03
Academic Progress
Curricular trajectory: approval rate, delay, units completed. Cohort segmentation by real academic history, not by the labels on the application form.
Module 04
Individual Profile
Semester-by-semester timeline. Risk indicators. Completion prediction. The single feature professors valued most in validation interviews.
LUMEN INDIVIDUAL Student #4291 Direcção e Gestão Hoteleira AVG 13.1 ENROLLMENTS 5 COMPLETED UCs 29 DROPOUT RISK 48.2% ANNUAL PROGRESS S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 S7 S8 Approved · Failed · Without Grade · Average
Module 04 · Individual Profile, live
LUMEN PROGRESS CRITICAL Critical or Non-Completing Universe: 16 students · 11.6% of total CURRENT AVERAGE 12 COURSE COMPLETION 64% ECTS COMPLETED 115/180 QUARTILE Bottom 25% EST. COMPLETION 9+ years DROPOUT RISK 48.2% DROPOUT RISK CONFIDENCE Model score: 90% Composite: historical risk (50%), academic average (30%), completion pace (20%)
Module 03 · Academic Progress drilldown, live
Lumen · For Higher Education · 2026
Inside the platform

Five risk tiers. Automatically classified.

LUMEN UNIVERSE ENTRY PROGRESS INDIVIDUAL Prof. Coelho ▾ Prediction of student categories throughout the course Direcção e Gestão Hoteleira · 2025/26 · 138 students Total Enrolled Students 138 students General Average 13.9 Critical and High-Risk Students 48 students Profiles Found 5 CRITICAL RISK Critical or Non-Completing Students 16 students 11.6% of total HIGH RISK Students at Risk of Dropout or Failure 32 students 23.2% of total MEDIUM RISK Students with Intermediate Performance 13 students 9.4% of total LOW RISK Students with High Performance 56 students 40.6% of total VERY LOW RISK Students with Exceptional Performance 21 students 15.2% of total DRILL INTO ANY TIER See exactly who is in it. Click any card to see the students, their academic history, and what the model is weighting. View Students →
Automatic classification
Every student placed into one of five tiers based on academic history. No manual labelling, no surveys, no faculty workload.
Drillable
Click any tier. See which students are in it, their full academic record, and why the model placed them there.
Tracked over time
Tier composition shifts semester to semester. The institution sees whether things are improving or deteriorating, programme by programme.
Lumen · For Higher Education · 2026
Extensible

Built to grow with your data.

Lumen is not four screens and done. Every new pattern surfaced in your data becomes a permanent view. Every new question your team brings, a new module.

01
Cohort dashboards.
Track equity, international students, scholarship recipients, first-generation completers. Any cohort your institution cares about. We build the view, you keep the view.
02
Custom analyses.
Lumen runs analyses unique to your institution's data and surfaces findings you weren't looking for. Each new finding becomes a permanent screen, available semester after semester.
03
Intervention tracking.
Faculty log what they tried. The platform measures what worked. Over time, you build a record of what actually shifts outcomes at your institution.
Lumen · For Higher Education · 2026
The Proof

Validated. Awarded. Working.

Excellent
FCT rating on the final research evaluation. The Portuguese national science foundation reviewed the project and rated it at the top tier on conceptual framework, execution, and impact.
HETL 2025
Higher Education Teaching & Learning Award, Dubai. Recognised for contribution to teaching and learning in higher education.
10,397
Students analysed across all academic programmes. Real institutional data, not synthetic samples.
33 yrs
Of academic records integrated into a single analytical framework. Longitudinal at a depth most institutions have never queried.

"Lumen could be a framework, not just a platform. A replicable model for the application of AI in higher education systems."

FCT 2024.07476.IACDC, Final Evaluation, April 2026
Lumen · For Higher Education · 2026
How it deploys

Built to plug into your institution.

Six things you need to know before a pilot. The architecture answers most of the questions IT and procurement teams ask before they sign.

Web-based
Browser-only.
No client install. SSO with your existing identity provider. Faculty open Lumen from any device with a browser. No new software for IT to manage, no new endpoint to lock down.
Plugs into your SIS
Reads what you already collect.
SIGES, SIA, Banner, Ellucian, Workday Student, or a custom system. Read-only ETL via secure connection. No writes back to your SIS, no risk to the source of truth.
All programme types
Bachelor's to PhD.
Postgraduate, integrated master's, short courses. If your SIS tracks it, Lumen reads it. The risk models recalibrate per programme type, so a doctoral student isn't measured against an undergraduate yardstick.
EU-hosted, GDPR-native
Data residency in your hands.
Cloud-hosted in the EU by default. Data residency in Portugal or on a partner cloud at the institution's choice.
Human support
A team, not a bot.
Dedicated customer-success manager. Onboarding, faculty training, semester-end reviews. We pick up the phone. We come on-site for kickoff if useful.
Pilot first
Annual licence, low-risk start.
A one-semester pilot runs at a fraction of the annual licence and includes deployment and training. If the pilot doesn't land, the institution walks away. If it does, the annual licence picks up where the pilot left off.
Lumen · For Higher Education · 2026
A framework, not a one-off

A Portuguese university was the first deployment. Yours could be the next.

Lumen was designed from day one to redeploy across institutions. The data structures it reads are common across European, North American, and Latin American universities. The ML models recalibrate on your historical records. The interface localises.

Lumen · For Higher Education · 2026
A typical pilot

From kickoff to validated insight in one semester.

01

Connect your data

Map your SIS to Lumen's star schema. Secure ETL. Anonymisation at the data layer. Quality profiling.

2 to 4 weeks
02

Recalibrate the models

Retrain the ensemble model on your historical academic records. Validate against known outcomes.

3 to 6 weeks
03

Tailor the interface

Localise course taxonomy, language, indicator names. Adapt the dashboards to your institutional context.

2 weeks
04

Onboard faculty

Two or three pilot programmes. Hands-on sessions with the professors and coordinators who'll use it.

1 week
05

Run a semester

Real students. Real cohort. Faculty interacting with the platform across the semester. Mid-pilot and end-of-pilot review.

One semester
Lumen · For Higher Education · 2026
What it gives back

Two views. One source of truth.

Lumen routes different signals to the rector's office than to the faculty member. The data layer is shared. The dashboards are role-aware. The student at the centre is the same.

For Rectors & Provosts
Retention, defended.
  • One retention number for the whole institution, sourced from one place
  • Risk hotspots, programme by programme, before each semester starts
  • Evidence behind every resource allocation conversation
  • Accreditation and funder KPIs generated, not assembled
For Deans & Course Directors
Every Monday, ready.
  • The students at risk in your courses, before the first overdue unit
  • Cohorts segmented by who students are now, not by the application form
  • What's failing, where, and for whom, every semester
  • A defensible reason to talk to a student, before grades come in
Lumen · For Higher Education · 2026

Retention is a decision. Your data already has the answer.

Your next dropout is already in your dataset. Lumen finds them while you can still act.

Lumen · For Higher Education · 2026
Next step

Let's see if Lumen fits your institution.

A 30-minute call to walk through your student information system, the retention questions your faculty actually ask, and what a one-semester pilot would look like at your university. We come prepared. You leave with an honest answer either way.

Book a 30-minute call

Team and origin

Guilherme Fontes
CEO, Procimo. Platform engineering, data infrastructure, deployment.
José Coelho, PI
PhD Computer Science, LaSIGE / ULisboa. HCI, Usability, Information Systems.
Diogo Lima, Co-PI
PhD Computer Science, LaSIGE / ULisboa. Distributed Computing, Fog, ML.
Procimo
Tech partner. Platform engineering, data infrastructure, deployment.
Built under FCT 2024.07476.IACDC · 2025 to 2026