Board of Directors
Maria Madalena dos Santos Alves
President
Madalena Alves is Full Professor of Biological Engineering at the University of Minho (UMinho), Portugal. She holds a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Porto, a Master's in Biochemical Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico (Lisbon), and a PhD in Chemical and Biological Engineering from the University of Minho. She is the President of the Board of Directors of FCT since July 1st, 2022.
She has held several academic and scientific management positions at UMinho, including Director of the Centre of Biological Engineering, member of the School Board and the Scientific Council of the School of Engineering. Between 2007 and 2009, she served as Director of the Founding Committee of the UMinho Agency for Energy and the Environment, an institutional initiative.
Her research interests lie primarily in Environmental Biotechnology, with a particular focus on biotechnological processes involving gases production and consumption. She participated as Principal Investigator, co-PI or team member in numerous research projects funded at national and European levels. She collaborated with international research networks and has served on evaluation panels of various scientific agencies, such as the Helmholtz Association (Germany) and the European Research Council (ERC), where she has been a panel member since 2021.
She has undertaken extended research stays at prestigious international laboratories, including the J. Craig Venter Institute in San Diego (USA), the Environmental Change Institute in Galway (Ireland), and the Wageningen University (Netherlands).
She was founder of a university-based spin-off company in the field of Environmental Biotechnology, where she served as Scientific Director from 2007 to 2014. The company was integrated into an established industrial group with international operations, and stemmed from pioneering R&D developed at UMinho.
From January 2021 to March 2022, she was a member of the Council of the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory (INL), appointed by the Portuguese Minister of Science and Technology. She subsequently served as President of the INL Council (July 2022–December 2023) and currently holds the position of Vice-President.
Professor Alves is a full member of the Portuguese Academy of Engineering, a member of the Advisory Board of SEDES (Viana do Castelo district), and of the Advisory Board of COTEC Portugal. She has received several awards and honours, including the Lettinga Award (2004), funded by Dutch environmental technology companies, and the BES Innovation Prize (2005). In 2009, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate (Doctor Honoris Causa) by the Technical University of Iași (Romania), and has been honoured by the Municipalities of Viana do Castelo and Braga.
Francisco João Duarte Cordeiro Correia dos Santos
Vice-President
Full Professor in the Department of Computer Engineering at the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), University of Lisbon (UL), and researcher at INESC-ID.
He has been a professor at IST since 2012, where, in addition to his teaching and research activity, he has held various academic and scientific management positions.
He taught a wide range of subjects in the different cycles of studies, and was awarded the prize for excellence in teaching in all the years he taught at IST.
He holds a PhD in Computer Engineering from the Free University of Brussels (Institute of Artificial Intelligence, IRIDIA-ULB, 2007). He was a Senior Researcher (Chargé de Recherches, FRS-FNRS) at the Machine Learning Group (MLG-ULB) of the same Belgian university, and an Assistant Researcher at the Artificial Intelligence Center of FCT/NOVA.
His research focuses on understanding collective phenomena that occur from the cellular level to human behavior. He has tackled problems such as the evolution of cooperation and social norms, the modeling of climate agreements and their institutions, and the role of technology and social networks in cooperation between humans, among others. These topics are addressed through the development and combination of techniques from areas such as artificial intelligence, mathematical biology, experimental economics and statistical physics.
His career as a researcher and teacher has been the subject of several national and international distinctions, such as the CGD/University of Lisbon Award 2016, the 2017 Young Scientist Award for Socio-Econophysics from the German Physics Society (DPG), the "Blue Sky Paper" Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI, 2018), the 2022 Excellence Award from the IST Pedagogical Council, or the appointment to the permanent seminar for young scientists (SJC) of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences (2017-2021).
António Bob Moura Santos
Member
He holds a PhD in Economics from ISCTE-IUL, having successfully defended his thesis “Public policy oriented towards Open Innovation”. He also holds a Master's degree in Labor Sciences (2002) and a degree in Economics (1998) from ISCTE.
In 2021, he assumed the role of Executive Coordinator of the “Impulso Jovens STEAM” and “Impulso Adultos” Programs (part of the Portuguese Recovery and Resilience Plan), at the Directorate-General for Higher Education. Between 2018 and 2021, he integrated the Board of Directors of ANI - Agência Nacional de Inovação, and was a member of the Executive Committee of FITEC (Innovation, Technology and Circular Economy Fund).
Between 2017 and 2024, he has represented the Science and Technology sectors in the Economic and Social Council. Additionally, in 2019 and 2020, he has served as Portugal`s National Delegate of the ERAC (European Research and Innovation Area Committee) Permanent Working Group on Open Science and Innovation (OSI).
Since 2001, he has collaborated with various Portuguese Government members in the area of Innovation Policy, contributing to the design, management and evaluation of several national initiatives. These include PROINOV (Integrated Innovation Support Program), as Advisor to the Prime Minister's Office, of the XIV Constitutional Government (2001-2002); the Technological Plan and the Lisbon Strategy (2006-2009), within the Presidency of the Council of Ministers; the Digital Agenda (2015) and the National Reform Plan (2009-2011), as Advisor to the Secretary of State for Innovation and Energy; the Digital Portugal Agenda and the National Program for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (2011-2013), at the Office of the Secretary of State for Entrepreneurship, Competitiveness and Innovation.He has also served as innovation project manager at UMIC - Innovation and Knowledge Mission Unit, under the Presidency of the Council of Ministers (2002-2005), where he was responsible for the development of programs such as the b-ON, OTIC, NEOTEC and Centers of Excellence programs. Between 2013 and 2016 he collaborated with CEiiA - Center for Engineering and Product Development, focusing on Smart Cities. Antonio has also experience as a lecturer in higher education Institutions, and he is author of several academic articles and non-academic publications, as well as opinion pieces in the area of innovation, technology and digital transformation.
Maria Paula Diogo
Member
Full Professor of History of Technology and Engineering in the Department of Applied Social Sciences at NOVA School of Science and Technology FCT NOVA, where she has taught since 1986. She served as department chair for four terms and was (co)director of CIUHCT - Interuniversity Center for the History of Science and Technology from 2007 to 2019. CIUHCT is one of Portugal’s most prominent research units in the History of Science and Technology field.
A pioneer in the field of the History of Technology in Portugal, her research focuses on the History of Technology and Engineering in both Portugal and its former colonies, as well as on the global circulation and appropriation of scientific and technological knowledge. She is particularly interested in the dynamics between centers and peripheries and the networks that connect them. More recently, she has explored the relationship between colonial/imperial engineering and the concept of the Anthropocene, leading the project Engineering the Anthropocene: Colonial Science, Technology and Medicine and the change of the African landscape. In this context, she has participated in and organized events under the international Anthropocene Campus project and, in 2021, curated the Anthropocene Forum, one of the events integrated in the Portuguese Presidency of the European Council.
She publishes regularly in leading international journals and is the author, co-author and co-editor of numerous books and book chapters with prestigious academic publishers. A founding member of several major international research networks in her field, she has organized numerous national and international conferences and workshops, including those of the most prominent scholarly societies. She has led and participated in several national and international projects. She was included in the "Women in Science" list in 2021 and received the two highest international distinctions in the field of the History of Technology: the Leonardo da Vinci Medal (2020, Society for the History of Technology) and the Kranzberg Lecture (2022, International Committee for the History of Technology), both awarded for the first time to a Portuguese researcher.