 In 2016, Hewlett-Packard (HP) awarded CAISL with the "HP Award for Innovation in Education".CAISL alumni have gone on to hold influential positions, both abroad and in Portugal, and have included Grammy Award-winning artists, Presidents of Portugal, Yamaha Artist-awarded concert pianists, and world-renowned journalists.CAISL's history begins in 1956, when the school is founded as "St. Columban's School", by Irish professor Anthony A. McKenna, to serve the children of the American engineers who were in Portugal working on the Salazar Bridge (now 25 de Abril Bridge), in Lisbon, so that the children would be able to reintegrate back into the American system upon their departure from Portugal.