Rogério Colaço began his professional career in 1986 at Instituto Superior Técnico, where he studied Materials Engineering. In 1991, he finished his degree and was appointed Trainee Assistant in the Department of Materials Engineering at Técnico. In 2002, he completed his PhD at Técnico and began his teaching career. He was appointed Full Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering in 2014.

In 2007 he founded the NanoMatLab laboratory, and his group’s research went beyond tribology and nanotribology to include biotribology.  In 2012, he started a new line of research with the support of Cimpor SGPS, to reduce CO2 emissions in cement production. He was one of the founders of the C5Lab – Sustainable Construction Materials Association, which aims to combat climate change by innovating the processes used by the national and international cement industry.

He is one of the world’s most cited scientists, ranking in the top 2% of his field in a study conducted by Stanford University.

He was Vice-President of Técnico for Administrative and Financial Management from 2013 to 2016.

On 2nd December 2019, he was elected President of Instituto Superior Técnico. On 20th December 2023, he was re-elected president of Instituto Superior Técnico.

Fernando Alexandre was born in 1972. He holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in Economics from the University of Coimbra and earned his PhD in Economics from the University of London, Birkbeck College, United Kingdom, in 2003. He is an Associate Professor with Habilitation at the University of Minho. He has served as Vice-Rector of the University of Minho, President of the School of Economics and Management, and Director of the Department of Economics. He was Vice-President of the Economic and Social Council. He has been a consultant for the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation. He is a researcher and the author or coordinator of eight books on the Portuguese economy, as well as a contributor to international scientific journals. He has worked as a consultant for both public and private entities, including the European Commission and the Portuguese government. From 2011 to 2015, he served as Deputy Secretary of State to the Minister of Internal Administration in Portugal’s XIX Constitutional Government.

He is currently the Minister for Education, Science and Innovation from the Portuguese XXIV Constitutional Government.

Miguel Ayala Botto received the MSc degree (1992) and the PhD degree (1996) in Mechanical Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), University of Lisbon, Portugal. He has been with the Department of Mechanical Engineering, IST, University of Lisbon, since 1989, where he is currently a Full Professor and integrated member of LAETA – the Associated Laboratory for Energy, Transports and Aeronautics. He served as a member of the Directive Council of IST for the Academic Affairs (2008–2009), as a member of the Managing Board of IST for the Human Resources (2009-2012), as Vice-President of IST for the Human Resources (2013-2016), and as Vice-President of the Department of Mechanical Engineering (2017-2019). He is currently Vice-President of the Scientific Council of IST (since 2017) and member of the Executive Board of Técnico+ (since 2020). He his since 2017 the coordinator of the Scientific Area of Control, Automation and Industrial Informatics from the Department of Mechanical Engineering. His research interests focus on nonlinear control, spanning from robotic systems to large complex transportation networks.

Leonel Sousa received the PhD degree in electrical and computer engineering from the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal, in 1996. He is currently a full professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department (DEEC) at IST, and a senior researcher at INESC-ID. he has been President of DEEC from 2017-2020, and President of INESC-ID in the periods 2011-2014 and 2018-2019. His research interests include computer architectures, high performance computing, and embedded systems. He is currently Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Computers, IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing, and Senior Editor of the IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Topics in Circuits and Systems. Dr. Leonel Sousa is Fellow of the IET, Distinguished Scientist of the ACM, and IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Contributor.

António Feijó is President of the Administration Board of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation since May 2022.

He is a Full Professor in the Department of English Studies and the Program in Literary Theory at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon.

He has served as Director of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Vice-Rector, and Pro-Rector of the University of Lisbon. He was also the Director of the University of Lisbon Press and the University of Lisbon Journal.

He holds a PhD in English and American Literature from Brown University (1985) and an MA in English and American Literature from the State University of New York at Albany (1979).

He is the author of books and essays on topics related to English, American, and Portuguese literature, as well as translations and stage adaptations (including Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Hamlet, and King Lear, and works by Oscar Wilde and Fernando Pessoa, among others).

He has curated exhibitions on literature at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (2008) and the Cupertino de Miranda Foundation (2018, in collaboration).

He was the Chair of the Independent General Council of RTP (Portugal’s public television broadcaster).

He was a Non-Executive Director of the Casa de Mateus Foundation.

He served as a Non-Executive Member of the Administration Board of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation from 2018 to 2022.

Rogério Colaço began his professional career in 1986 at Instituto Superior Técnico, where he studied Materials Engineering. In 1991, he finished his degree and was appointed Trainee Assistant in the Department of Materials Engineering at Técnico. In 2002, he completed his PhD at Técnico and began his teaching career. He was appointed Full Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering in 2014.

In 2007 he founded the NanoMatLab laboratory, and his group’s research went beyond tribology and nanotribology to include biotribology.  In 2012, he started a new line of research with the support of Cimpor SGPS, to reduce CO2 emissions in cement production. He was one of the founders of the C5Lab – Sustainable Construction Materials Association, which aims to combat climate change by innovating the processes used by the national and international cement industry.

He is one of the world’s most cited scientists, ranking in the top 2% of his field in a study conducted by Stanford University.

He was Vice-President of Técnico for Administrative and Financial Management from 2013 to 2016.

On 2nd December 2019, he was elected President of Instituto Superior Técnico. On 20th December 2023, he was re-elected president of Instituto Superior Técnico.

Pedro Amaral Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico with a Ph.D. in Materials Engineering concluded in 2004. His research work has been focused in the following areas: i) advanced characterization of materials; ii) optimization of manufacturing processes; iii) product development (mainly using natural materials), with a multifunctional nature, especially applying “design for manufacturing” models integrated with the final application. His main research projects (either at national and internacional level) are mainly developed with industry and originate new materials and products that are currently being launched into the market as part of each innovation strategy. More recently, using large-scale industrial data acquisition strategies, it is involved in the modelling of some manufacturing processes, whose results are being used as innovative logical systems, allowing optimization and introducing new technologies, especially in the some traditional, but highly valuable, industries. He is the author of more than 100 international publications and participated as a fellow or coordinator of more than 15 R&D projects in partnership with companies, half of which were carried out within the scope of the European Commission. As Vice-President of Técnico, he is currently heading the general operations of the school and coordinating the corporate relationships of IST, along with the development of Técnico+ (the new strategy for Pos-grad & Professional Education).

Miguel is an entrepreneur, traveller and founder of Magma Studio, a talent management consultancy firm. He’s into family, friends and business. Into mountains, marathons and art. He’s fully committed to build the world’s leading career acceleration program.

Arlindo Oliveira obtained his BSc and MSc degrees from Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) and his PhD degree from the University of California at Berkeley. He is a distinguished professor of IST, president of the INESC group, member of the board of Caixa Geral de Depósitos, researcher at INESC-ID, and member of the National Council for Science, Technology and Innovation and of the Advisory Board of the Science and Technology Options Assessment (STOA) Panel of the European Parliament. He authored three books, translated into different languages, and hundreds of scientific and newspaper articles. He has been on the boards of several companies and institutions and is a past president of IST, of the Portuguese Association for Artificial Intelligence, and of INESC-ID. He was the head of the Portuguese Node of the European Network for Biological Data (ELIXIR), visiting professor at MIT, and a researcher at CERN, INESC, Cadence Research Laboratories and Electronics Research Labs of UC Berkeley. He is a member of the Portuguese Academy of Engineering and a senior member of IEEE. He received several prizes and distinctions, including the Technical University of Lisbon / Santander prize for excellence in research, in 2009.

Mário Figueiredo is a Distinguished Professor at Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon, with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and holds the Feedzai Chair on Machine Learning. He is a group leader at Instituto de Telecomunicações. His interests include statistical machine learning, signal processing, and optimization. He has received several honors and awards, namely: Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), of the International Association forPattern Recognition (IAPR), of the European Association for Signal Processing (EURASIP), and of ELLIS (European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems); IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award, Baker Award (IEEE), Pierre Devijver Award (IAPR), EURASIP Technical Achievement Award. He is a member of the Portuguese Academy of Engineering and a corresponding member of the Lisbon Academy of Science. From 2014 to 2018 he was included in the annual list “Highly Cited Researchers”.

Chrysoula (Chryssa) Zerva is an Assistant Professor for Artificial Intelligence at IST and a researcher at Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT) in Lisbon. She is a member of the European Laboratory for Learning & Intelligent Systems (ELLIS) and LUMLIS, the Lisbon Unit for Learning & Intelligent Systems. She obtained her PhD in 2019 from the University of Manchester on “Automated Identification of Textual Uncertainty”. In 2019 she also received the EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellowship and in 2021, she joined IT as a postdoc for the DeepSPIN project.

She is a co-PI in the Centre for Responsible AI project, a PRR initiative for trustworthy, sustainable, fair, and transparent AI. She is also part of the EuroLLM and UTTER projects, leading the work on adaptable and context-aware models. Her research focuses on elucidating uncertainty in machine learning and especially NLP. She also explores topics of explainability, fairness and quality estimation under multilingual and multimodal setups.

Catarina Vieira completed her Master’s degree in Materials Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico in 2022, followed by a year of research experience. She is currently entering her second year as a PhD student, focusing her research work on the diagnostics of Li-ion batteries for second-life applications, with the goal of contributing to more sustainable energy solutions.

José M. Orench is currently enrolled in a study cycle leading to the doctoral degree in Chemistry at Universidade de Lisboa – Instituto Superior Técnico since September 2023. Recently, his work is on hydrothermal vent biogeochemistry and protocell formation with an emphasis on astrobiology and the origin of life. He has earned a Master of Science in Biological Sciences at Northern Illinois University and a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Microbiology at the Recinto Universitario de Mayagüez – Universidad de Puerto Rico. His research interests lie in the frontier of human space exploration and Earth’s evolutionary history. He wishes to understand the evolutionary history responsible for microbial metabolisms, such as photosynthesis, their development, driven evolution, and their possible applications to the search of life in the universe.

Diogo Nunes completed his Master’s in Informatics and Computer Engineering in January 2021 from the University of Lisbon, Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), and a Bachelor’s degree in Informatics and Computer Engineering in 2018 from the same institution. He has been attending the PhD course in Informatics and Computer Engineering at the University of Lisbon, IST, since February 2021, under the supervision of professors David Martins de Matos (IST) and Joana Ferreira Gomes (Faculty of Medicine, University of Porto). He is an Early Stage Researcher at the Institute of Systems and Computer Engineering Research and Development in Lisbon (INESC-ID), at the Human Language Technology (HLT) laboratory, since 2019. His research is focused on the natural language processing of the language of (chronic) pain for the clinical assessment of pain and patient empowerment.

Catarina Botelho received the Integrated Master’s degree in in Biomedical Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico in 2018. Currently, she is a doctoral candidate in Electrical and Computer Engineering, at INESC-ID and Instituto Superior Técnico. She was a research intern at Google AI, Toronto, and a visitor researcher at the Cognitive Systems Lab, University of Bremen. She was involved in the student advisory committee of the International Speech Communication Association (ISCA-SAC), from 2020 to 2023, acting as Coordinator in 2022.
Her scientific interests focus on speech and language technology and applied machine learning for healthcare.

Jorge is a Control System Application Engineer at Amp X, specializing in energy system optimization and model predictive control. He focuses on algorithms like forecasting modeling, inverse model-based control, and genetic algorithms optimization, using Python, MATLAB, Simulink, and C#.
Since March 2023, Jorge has coordinated the “Comboios de Bicicletas de Lisboa” school mobility program at Bicicultura, managing safe bicycle routes for children. He also worked with Lisbon City Council as part of the management team.
He holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s in Electrical and Computer Engineering, completed Erasmus exchanges in Delft and Barcelona, and earned a PhD in Sustainable Energy Systems from the MIT Portugal Program, with research at MIT funded by a Fulbright Research Grant.

Elsa Abranches is a Senior Director and Head of Cell Therapy Bioprocess Development and Manufacturing, within the Cell Therapy Department of BioPharmaceuticals R&D at AstraZeneca. Elsa is responsible for leading the section providing translational technology and high-quality cells for pre-clinical research, to enable the efficient development and delivery of Cell Therapy projects to patients. Elsa is currently also the regional treasurer of the European Committee of the International Society for Cell & Gene Therapy.

Elsa Abranches is internationally recognized for her expertise in stem cell biotechnology, standardization and Advanced Therapies regulation areas, with over 20 years of experience ranging from applied research through to manufacturing and regulatory compliance of stem cell-derived products.

Elsa has received her degree in Chemical Engineering in 2001 and her Ph.D in Stem Cell Biotechnology in 2006, from the Technical University of Lisbon. Since then, Elsa has delivered on multiple collaborative projects both in Academia and within the UK Regulator (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, MHRA), focused on assuring the quality of clinical grade stem cell lines alongside a program of cell and gene therapy standardisation. Elsa has also been involved in several national and international committees supporting regulatory compliance and delivery of Advanced Therapy Medicinal products.

Frederico Fiuza is a Professor of Physics at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), University of Lisbon, and a Visiting Professor at Stanford University. He obtained his master’s degree in Engineering Physics in 2007 and his PhD in Physics in 2012, both from IST. Before returning to IST in 2023, he spent 11 years in the United States, where he was a Lawrence Fellow at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a Senior Staff Scientist and Theory Group Leader at Stanford University and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. His current scientific interests focus on cosmic ray acceleration, plasma physics, and inertial fusion. Frederico’s research in these areas has been recognized by the American Physical Society (APS) with the Thomas H. Stix Award in 2018, the John Dawson Award in 2020 and the Landau Spitzer Award in 2024. In 2022, the European Research Council awarded him a prestigious ERC Consolidator Grant. In 2023, he was elected a Kavli Fellow by the National Academy of Sciences in the United States and an APS Fellow by the American Physical Society.

Frederico Francisco, 38 years-old, born in Cascais, Portugal. He currently works as a Senior Consultant at TIS – Transport, Innovation and Systems and  is also teaching Physics at the Faculty of Science of the University of Porto.

He has a Master’s Degree in Aerospace Engineering (2009, Instituto Superior Técnico) and a Ph.D. in Physics (2014, Instituto Superior Técnico). He did research in Fundamental Physics in Space, where he has more than two dozen papers published in journals and conferences. He received the 2018 Zeldovich Medal from the Russian Academy of Sciences and COSPAR (Commission on Space Research). He also developed research work in rail transport, where he participated in European projects.

Between 2019 and 2023, he worked in the Office of the Minister of Infrastructure and Housing of Portugal, where he coordinated the preparation of the National Railway Plan and accompanied all the preparation for the launch of the Porto – Lisbon High Speed Line.

He was Secretary of State for Infrastructure in the Government of Portugal between January 2023 and April 2024.

Rafael is a Project Manager at EWF with a vast experience in manufacturing. He was also a researcher at the IDMEC research unit until 2023, where his research work was focused on joining by plastic deformation, in which he published more than 25 publications resulting from the development of different joining solutions.
With a strong connection to teaching, he was an Invited Assistant Professor at the University of Lisbon from 2017 to 2023 and currently, he is responsible for the course of Manufacturing Processes at the Atlântica University. Over the years, he taught content related to manufacturing, standardisation, quality control, metrology, additive manufacturing and non-conventional technologies.
Simultaneously, he provided consultancy for some manufacturing companies, contributing to the optimization and update of its processes, as well as implementing several significant improvements.

António Raminhos was born in 1980 (a leap year that started on a Tuesday and ended on a Wednesday), much to the dismay of his parents. That same year, Sporting won the national championship, and José Cid won the Festival da Canção. Some say, however, that the birth of little António was a form of divine compensation for the loss, in that same year, of geniuses like Jean-Paul Sartre, Alfred Hitchcock, Vinicius de Moraes, and John Lennon. Thirty-seven years later, that theory remains unproven.

Professionally, he started out quite poorly, aiming for poverty, as he worked as a journalist (for A Capital newspaper and RTP). When he found himself unemployed, he decided to give humor a try. He took to the stage for the first time in 2006, and for reasons still unclear, people liked it. Since then, he hasn’t stopped trying to be funny. He wrote columns for Maxmen, gained fame on TV shows like 5 Para a Meia-Noite and Dança com as Estrelas, and created a highly successful internet talk show called Banheira das Vaidades. More recently, he became one of the voices of Café da Manhã on RFM, with the segment “As Marias”. The show of the same name sold out venues across the country, and now comes the book of the same name, which is truly spectacular.

Despite all these more or less impressive accomplishments, the best thing he ever did was winning the heart of his wife, Catarina, with whom he has—so it’s said—conceived his three lovely daughters: Maria Rita, Maria Inês, and Maria Leonor.

Pedro Brogueira PhD in Engineering Physics and Full Professor in the Department of Physics at Técnico in the area of Condensed Matter Physics and Nanotechnologies. His main research interests focus on Atomic Force Microscopy, semiconductor materials and devices, biomaterials, energy, and particle physics detectors. He is co-author of over 180 articles, 2 teaching books, 20 scientific videos, and 3 science exhibitions. He has been involved in around 30 competitively funded scientific projects. He has served as Coordinator of the Master’s programs in Engineering Physics and Biomedical Engineering, President of the Department of Physics at IST, President of the Center of Physics and Engineering of Advanced Materials (CeFEMA), Coordinator of the committee for rethinking engineering education and the teaching model and pedagogical practices at IST (CAMEPP), and Coordinator of the proposal for the new Bachelor’s degree in General Engineering (GENI). He is currently the President of the Scientific Council of IST and Coordinator of the Scientific Area of Condensed Matter and Nanotechnology in the Department of Physics.