In the most recent call for funding within an agreement between the Portuguese Science Foundation (FCT) and CERN, GoLP/IPFN researchers Nelson Lopes and Jorge Vieira, were awarded with 80 thousand euros to investigate key open questions at the Advanced Wakefield Experiment (AWAKE) at CERN. AWAKE uses ultra-relativistic proton bunches available at CERN to excite relativistic plasma waves that could ultimately accelerate electrons (or positrons) to 10-100 GeVs in a 10-100 meter long plasma. This project will allow investigating some of the crucial questions to attain this goal from technological, experimental, numerical and also theoretical standpoints.