MIT Portugal has appointed two new members to the Program Governing Committee

The MIT Portugal program has two new members on the Program Governing Committee (PGC): Paulo Ferrão, appointed by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and who will assume the position of representative of the Portuguese entities, and Dava Newman, current Director of the MIT Media Lab and who will assume the role of representative of the MIT Portugal administration.

Paulo Ferrão is a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Técnico (DEM) and was one of the co-founders of the Center for Innovation, Technology and Policy Research (IN+). He was director of the MIT Portugal Program from 2006 to 2016 and president of the Foundation for Science and Technology between 2016 and 2019. He is also a member of Rolls-Royce's Environmental Advisory Committee. Dava Newman is the Apollo Program Professor of Astronautics in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT and a faculty member of the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology. Dava was director of the MIT Portugal Program from 2011 to 2015 and from 2017 to June 2021.

The PGC is responsible for supervising activities, approving the annual plan and allocating the budget for any proposed activities. With these two new appointments, the PGC has increased from 5 to 7 members, taking into account the vast experience of the new members and the contributions they will make to the community and to boosting the Program's activities.

The other members of the PGC are José Paulo Esperança, President of the structure and current Vice-President of FCT; Richard K. Lester, MIT Associate Dean for International Activities, and Maria Zuber, MIT Vice-President for Research, as representatives of the MIT administration; António M. Cunha, President of the Northern Regional Coordination and Development Commission (CCDR-N), representing Portuguese entities; and Isabel Furtado, CEO of TMG Automotive, representing Portuguese industry.

Biography Paulo Ferrão
Biography Dava Newman

Photo credits: Paulo Ferrão, COST website; Dava Newman, NASA