CENTRA - Multidisciplinary Center of Astrophysics - is a research centre founded in 1994 through a collaboration between Instituto Superior Técnico of the Technical University of Lisbon and the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of the Algarve. Its main center is in the Instituto Superior Técnico (CENTRA/IST), with a dependency in the University of the Algarve and collaborators in the University of Beira Interior.

The areas of research of CENTRA/UAlg are Astrophysics, Cosmology, High Energy Physics and String Theory.

Research areas of the Department of Physics of the University of the Algarve include, apart from  the areas of CENTRA, Mediacl Physics, Optics, Biophysics, Solid State Physics, Submarine Acoustics and Physics of Fluids.