António Costa Silva was born in Angola in 1952.

He has a degree in Mining Engineering from the Lisbon University Higher Technical Institute, a master’s degree in Petroleum from Imperial College (University of London), a PhD in Petrol Reserve Engineering from Lisbon University Higher Technical Institute and Imperial College.

He is professor emeritus at the Lisbon University Higher Technical Institute, where he also taught Planning and Integrated Management of Energy Resources.

Upon invitation of the Portuguese Government, in 2020 he drafted the Strategic Vision for Portugal’s Economic Recovery Plan for 2020-2030 and presided over the National Steering Committee for the Recovery and Resilience Programme since May 2021.

Chairman of the Partex Executive Committee from 2004 to 2021.

He was Director of Reservoir Engineering and Production at Beicip-Franlab, the corporate branch of the French Petroleum Institute (Paris, 2001-2003) and Executive Director of the Compagnie Géneral de Geophysique in Portugal (1998-2001). He began his professional career at Sonangol (Angola) in 1980, and from 1984 to 1997 he worked at the Portuguese Service Company.

Throughout his career, he was charged with coordinating several international energy projects, particularly the Middle East, Algeria, Mexico, Venezuela, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and Angola.

He was selected in 2002 by the International Court of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce as the expert charged with solving the legal and technical dispute between two of the major oil companies in the world in an oil rig on the China sea.

Since 2018, he has been a member of the Board of Trustees of Aveiro University; he was also Chairman of the Fuel Board of the regulator – ERSE, member of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Advisory Board and Chairman of the Water Initiative Advisory Board at Católica University in Lisbon.

He was member of the ISCTE- Lisbon University Institute Board of Trustees and the Advisory Board of the Gulbenkian Programme for Development Aid.

He was a guest speaker at international conferences on energy, energy and geopolitics, and has published several articles and papers in the fields of energy, strategy, geopolitics, and international relations.

Pedro Santa-Clara is a Full Professor Finance at the Nova School of Business and Economics since 2007. He was Assistant, Associate and Full Professor of Finance at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management from 1996 to 2009. Pedro has an undergraduate degree in Economics from Nova SBE and a Ph.D. in Finance from INSEAD.

Pedro has published more than 30 papers in top academic journals of Finance and Economics. He was a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a research fellow of the Center for Economic Policy Research.

In 2012, Pedro’s career took a radical turn, and, over the subsequent six years, he led the construction of the new campus in Carcavelos for Nova SBE and the €54 million campaign that funded it. In this context, Pedro led the creation of Fundação Alfredo de Sousa, which he presided between 2015 and 2018.

In the beginning of 2019, Pedro started Shaken Not Stirred a company that promotes and manages education projects: 42 Lisboa opened in October 2020 and 42 Porto opened in July of 2022; Miles in the Sky started in August 2021; TUMO to open its first center in Coimbra in September 2023.

Pedro is a founder and member of the Board of Trustees of Instituto Mais Liberdade, a think tank that promotes the liberal ideals of individual freedom, market economy and democracy.

Pedro is a founding partner of Atrium Portofolio Managers, an asset management firm created in 1999, and of Data4Deals, a fintech startup created in 2021.

Pedro is married to Ana Conduto and has three wonderful kids, André, Tiago, Tomás, and two beautiful grandchildren, Mateo and Sofia. In his spare time – what spare time? – Pedro enjoys running, crossfit, reading, and, most of all, spending time with friends and family.

Mário Figueiredo holds a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon, where he is a Distinguished Professor and holder of the Feedzai Chair in Machine Learning. He has received numerous honors and awards, namely: Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Fellow of the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR), Fellow of the European Association for Signal Processing (EURASIP), Fellow of the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS), member of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences, and member of the Portuguese Academy of Engineering.

José Maria Pimentel is an economist, lecturer in critical thinking, and podcast host. He is Director of the Postgraduate Program in Critical Thinking and Decision-Making at ISCTE Executive Education and a guest lecturer at Católica-Lisbon. He works as a consultant, trainer, and speaker on critical thinking and decision-making,. He is the host of the award-winning podcast 45 Graus, a commentator on RTP News, a Digital Ambassador to the European Commission, and the author of Política a 45 Graus. He holds an MBA from Lisbon MBA (Católica & Nova) and is a researcher in Political Science at ISCTE-IUL.

Bruna Lima is a PhD student in Technological Physics Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico
(IST), researching at the Laboratory of Instrumentation and Experimental Particle Physics (LIP), in
the Space Rad group. She develops frameworks for modelling radiation environments in deep
space, on the Moon and on Mars, focused on dosimetry and radiological risk assessment for
human spaceflight. Alongside her research, she is a teaching assistant in the Experimental
Physics Laboratories and Doctoral School Student Representative. Outside the lab, she does
science and space exploration outreach, tracking stratospheric balloons across the country with
the BaLua project.

Maria Zolotareva is a Ph.D. student in Biotechnology and Biosciences at Instituto Superior
Técnico (IST). Her research focuses on genomic biomarkers for antimicrobial resistance in
pathogenic yeasts. Under a non-academic environment scholarship bringing together research at the Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences (iBB) with the development of rapid diagnostic technologies at the start-up FLASH, Maria is currently exploring the space between discoveries in basic science and their translation into practical applications for healthcare.

André Ribeiro is a PhD Fast Track student in Electrical and Computer Engineering, currently in the 1st Year of his PhD. His research is centered on bio-inspired coding and neuromorphic computing with INESC-ID, right at the intersection of HPC and mathematics on which he completed his Bsc and Msc. The investigation is carried together with the Neuromorphic Computing Lab at Politecnico di Torino, benefiting from the Unite! European university constellation. Before, he was a TA on 23/24, and president of BEST ULisboa on 22/23. On the flip side of his investigation, he is a federated Padel Player.

Bruno Oliveira is a PhD student in physics working on the phenomenology of heavy neutrinos. His research explores their theoretical signatures and prospects for discovery or constraint at present and future collider experiments, connecting these searches to broader questions in neutrino mas s generation and physics beyond the Standard Model.

Aisha Mamade is Head of Operations at Baseform, a company that provides innovative software for water utilities. One of her goals is to help bring about a change in the way utilities work, communicate and use their data, so that they can make better-informed decisions, save time and become more efficient. This goal is rooted in 10 years of experience in capacity-building programmes at LNEC, with direct impact in Portugal and Brazil, and in her participation in working groups of the International Water Association (IWA). Aisha holds a degree in Civil Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico and did her PhD in the field of energy efficiency.

Samuel is a Senior Director at Microsoft Research in Redmond, US, and leads strategy and partnerships across healthcare and life sciences, with additional work in quantum computing, AI for science, and robotics. Previously, Samuel served as Deputy Director in Global Health at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and as an Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company. He holds a PhD in Physics and a degree in Physics Engineering from Técnico and was a visiting PhD student at UCLA.

Alexandre Mateus is the Head of International Trade in the EU Delegation to Colombia since September 2025. He started his career in the European Commission in 2011, holding various posts including Head of the Digital Trade sector in the Directorate General for Trade (2023-2025) and Head of the Economic and Trade Section of the Delegation of the European Union in Peru (2020-2023). He was also a trade negotiator of both bilateral free trade agreements and in multilateral negotiations at the WTO, in the areas of Digital Trade and Telecommunications. Alexandre completed his doctoral studies in Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University (USA) and Instituto Superior Técnico (Portugal) in 2011. He holds a master’s degree in Management of Technological Innovation and a bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from the Technical University of Lisbon (Portugal).

Sam Antao Sam Antao currently works with AMD’s HPC and Sovereign AI organization, where he leads AMD’s engagements in Centers of Excellence established alongside major sovereign compute centers across Europe and around the world, helping users, developers, and scientists make the most out of supercomputers. Prior to AMD, he was at IBM, where he led work on compilers and programming models for high-performance computing, with a particular focus on GPU computation, and was responsible for the first implementation of OpenMP offloading in the Clang compiler for GPUs. He graduated in 2013, having conducted research at the intersection of GPUs, FPGAs, and cryptography, laying the foundation for his subsequent career in high-performance computing.

Francisco C. Santos (Lisbon, 1980) is Full Professor at the Department of Computer Science of Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), University of Lisbon, and vice-president of the board of directors of FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia). He obtained his MSc and PhD in Computer Science from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, where he after stayed as a senior researcher in artificial intelligence (AI) labs for several years. Previously, he studied Physics and Mathematics at the University of Lisbon. His research examines how macroscopic patterns emerge and are maintained in large populations, with applications in social, life and engineering sciences. To this end, he resorts to seemingly unrelated tools such as AI, mathematical biology, experimental economics and statistical physics. In the last years, Francisco has been working on the role of cooperation in evolution, the evolution of moral systems, environmental governance, network science, city planning, and the impact of technology on human behaviour. He was awarded the 2017 Young Scientist Award for Socio-Econophysics of the German Physical Society, the 2016 CGD / U-Lisbon prize in Computer Science, and the 2022 IST’s Outstanding Teaching Award, among other prizes. Before joining FCT, Francisco coordinated the Group of Artificial Intelligence for People and Society (GAIPS/INESC-ID), was one of the coordinators of the MSc in Data Science and Engineering, and coordinated the PhD programme in Computer Science of IST.

Web: http://web.tecnico.ulisboa.pt/franciscocsantos/

Cláudia Lobato da Silva (CLS) received a Diploma in Chemical Engineering (Biotechnology) from Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Technical University of Lisbon (Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, UTL), Portugal, in 2001, and a Ph.D. in Biotechnology from IST-UTL in 2006, in collaboration with the University of Nevada, Reno, USA. CLS is currently an Associate Professor (Habilitation) in the Department of Bioengineering at IST, Universidade de Lisboa. She has served as Coordinator of the Bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering at IST from 2021 to 2024 and has served as Vice-Coordinator of the Master’s degree since 2021. She was a Member of the Pedagogical Council of IST from 2017 to 2022 and a Member of the Scientific Council of IST from 2023 to 2024. CLS coordinates the Stem Cell Engineering Research Group (SCERG) at iBB – Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences, IST. In January 2025, she was appointed Co-Coordinator of RedeSAÚDE, Universidade de Lisboa. From 2015 to 2019, she served as Vice-President of the Portuguese Society of Stem Cells and Cellular Therapies (Sociedade Portuguesa de Células Estaminais e Terapias Celulares, SPCE-TC) and in 2025 she received the SPCE-TC Career Award.

Patricia Mamona

is a PhD candidate in Aerospace Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico, where he completed his master’s degree in the same field in 2022. With a scholarship from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), he conducts research on nonlinear methods for the autonomous control of launch vehicles. Beyond academia, he has always been involved in sports, from football to surfing and martial arts. Alongside his PhD, he has competed internationally in stickfighting, becoming European and World Champion in the sport.