I was a Cornell University PhD student in Operations Research & Industrial Engineering from August 1990 until May 1994 when I visited New York City and the Twin Towers and fell in love. 

From what I remember on the afternoon of 9/11, a colleague of mine (Jaime Ramos) informed me at IST (Lisbon Institute of Science & Technology, previously a part of the Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal) that one of the Twin Towers had been hit by an airplane. I felt extremely sorrowful and couldn’t believe it. As such, I left for my house immediately (which was just a 3 minute walk from IST) to follow the events, and watched as a second plane hit the other tower on live television – I remember asking myself whether or not what I was watching on TV was real, or simply a nightmare! 

When I attended a conference in NYC on July of 2001, I remember visiting the Twin Towers then – I still have the picture of myself on top of the tower during that trip.

António Pacheco Pires – Fulbright to Portugal 1990