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MIT Portugal appointed two new members to the Program Governing Committee

The MIT Portugal program has two new members in 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 at Técnico's Department of Mechanical Engineering (DEM), and was one of the co-founders of the Centre 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 the Environmental Advisory Committee of Rolls-Royce. Dava Newman is the Apollo Program Professor of Astronautics in MIT's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics 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 until June 2021.

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

The remaining 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, Vice President for Research at MIT, 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