Local organizing committee

Manuel Heitor, IN+/IST

José Manuel Mendonça, INESC Porto; UTEN Portugal

Miguel Amaral, IN+/IST

Aurora Teixeira, INESC Porto

Hugo Horta, IN+/IST

Francisco V Cunha, IN+/IST

João Claro, INESC Porto

Marco Bravo, IC2 Institute, The University of Texas at Austin, UTEN Austin

Roberto Sbragia, Universidade de São Paulo, BR


Manuel Heitor

Manuel Heitor is Full Professor at Instituto Superior Técnico, IST, the engineering school of the Technical University of Lisbon, www.ist.utl.pt, and served as Secretary of State for Science, Technology and Higher Education in the Government of Portugal from March 2005 to June 2011. He graduated in 1981 in Mechanical Engineering from IST and carried out his studies in the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine of the University of London in the area of Fluid Mechanics and Combustion, where in 1985 he obtained his Doctorate degree. In 1986 he conducted a post-doctoral study in the University of California San Diego in the area of microgravity flame propagation.

Manuel Heitor was appointed Assistant Professor (1986) of the Department of Mechanical Engineering of IST, Associate Professor (1991) and Full Professor (1995). He is co-editor of several books ("Combusting Flow Diagnostics", Kluwer Acad. Publ., 1992; "Unsteady Combustion", Kluwer Acad. Publ., 1996) and author of several scientific papers in the area of experimental combustion and related energy aspects. During the period 1990-2005 he was a member and main promoter of the Intl. Organizing Committee of the Conferences on "Applic. of Laser Techniques to Fluid Mechanics", http://in3.dem.ist.utl.pt/conflaser/, based on which he has co-edited several books through Springer Verlag. He was President of the Portuguese Section of the Combustion Institute during the period 1995-2002.

Manuel Heitor has served as Deputy-President of Instituto Superior Técnico, Technical University of Lisbon, for the period 1993-1998. He is co-author of "New Ideas for the University" (in portuguese), IST Press, 1998, and has published several technical papers in the area of science and higher education policy. His research work includes publications in the area of the management of technology and the development of science, technology and innovation policies.

Since 1995, he has been Research Fellow of the IC2 Institute, Innovation, Creativity and Capital, the University of Texas at Austin. He is member of the Advisory Board of "Technological Forecasting and Social Change" and the "Intl. Journal of Technology, Policy and Management", where he has served as guest editor for several Special Issues. He chaired during the period 1996-2005 the Organizing Committee of the series of International Conferences on "Technology Policy and Innovation", http://in3.dem.ist.utl.pt/confpolicy/. He his co-editor of the book series on "Technology Policy and Innovation", launched through Greenwood Publishers, Connecticut and continued through Purdue University Press. In the area of Engineering Design, he published "The Glass Chair" (IST Press), and "Collaborative Design and learning: competence building for innovation" (Praeger books).

Manuel Heitor was the founding director of the IST´s "Center for Innovation, Technology and Policy Research", http://in3.dem.ist.utl.pt/, which was awarded in 2005 by the International Association of Management of Technology, IAMOT, has one of the top 50 global centres of research on "Management of Technology". He launched the IST´s Programmes on "Engineering Policy and Management of Technology" (1998) and on "Engineering Design" (2002), as well as the "IST Design Studio", (2002). In 2004 he received the Research Excellence Award of the IAMOT.

He was appointed in 1999 National Coordinator of the Research Assessment Exercise by the Portuguese Ministry of Science and Technology, and has coordinated the Research Assessment in the area of Mechanical Engineering in 1996. He was co-founder in 2002 of "Globelics - the global network for the economics of learning, innovation, and competence building systems", and has worked until 2005 as member of its Scientific Board and co-Director of the "Globelics Academy – PhD School on Systems of Innovation and Economic Development". In 2003 he coordinated a national initiative and exhibition on the history of engineering in Portugal in the 20th century, which was awarded with the Dibner Award of the Society for the History of Technology, SHOT.

Manuel Heitor has participated in several international fora on science, technology and innovation policy, and represented Portugal at the OECD`s initiative on "Steering and Funding of Public Research" and in the "Futures Program". He is a founding member of the Science and Technology Council of the "International Risk Governance Council", IRGC.

While in the Government of Portugal, Manuel Heitor was successfully involved in attracting public and private investment on R&D, strengthening the research landscape of the country and in the reform and modernization of higher education. He was particularly instrumental in conceiving, implementing, and building up international consortia in research and advanced training with leading American universities, encompassing industry-science relationships and technology commercialization activities.


José Manuel Mendonça

He is Full Professor at the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management of the Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto and President of the Board of Directors of INESC Porto.

He is at the board of Fibersensing, SA, a member of the Support Group and High-Level Group of the Manufuture European Technology Platform, the Management Board of the MIT Portugal Engineering Design and Advanced Manufacturing area and he is the Director of the University Technology Enterprise Network (UTEN). He is also National Delegate to the NMP (Nanotechnologies, Materials and Production Processes) Committee of the EC 7th Framework Program.

José Mendonça has a degree in Electrical Engineering from FEUP (1977) and a Ph.D. in Energy Systems from Imperial College, London (1986). He is a Full Professor at FEUP since 2003. In the first ten years of his career (1977-1986) he has worked in industry in Portugal (EDP – Sines Power Plant Project Team) and Switzerland (BBC, now ABB Group – Birrfeld Large Turbo Generators Design).

He also worked in applied R&D in Denmark (Denmark Technical High-School - Lyngby, Copenhagen), United Kingdom (Imperial College of Science and Technology - London) and Germany (Fraunhofer-IPA - Stuttgart) in the areas of wind turbine control systems, industrial electronics, industrial automation and manufacturing management systems.

This first decade was followed by ten years (1986-1996) at the leading R&D Institute INESC, in Porto, where he gained seniority in contract research, technology development and consultancy for the industry, being responsible for the creation of the Manufacturing Systems Engineering Unit, a group of 40 people and an annual turnover of 1,5 million €.

Management experience was gained in many large national and international EC funded R&D projects within the Esprit - Integration in manufacturing area. A number of resulting industrial prototypes and systems have been installed in industry and niche products have been transferred to vendors. He has been consultant for the European Commission-DGIII-F1 Division, Senior Reviewer of several Esprit projects in the Integration in Manufacturing domain and evaluator in Intelligent Manufacturing Systems and Economical and Technological Intelligence calls for proposals.

Between 1996 and 2001, he has assumed responsibilities downstream in different fields of innovation management and technology transfer. As executive member of the Board of Agência de Inovação, SA, representing the Ministry of Economy, he has been directly involved in the design and operational management of different activities of the Portuguese Innovation Agency, where he has built a team of 17 people in Porto giving a strong contribution in Innovation Financing Programs, Regional Innovation Strategies, Porto Science and Technology Park and Innovation Relay Center (IRC) technology transfer activities, as well as the first Portuguese Benchmarking Initiative with the Portuguese industry, supported by IAPMEI. In 2001, he has joined the launching team of the Ilídio Pinho Foundation, a private non-profit public utility Foundation working in the promotion of science and technology, technology transfer and venture capital investment. He has been executive member of the Board of Ilídio Pinho Foundation between 2001 and 2004, as well as of the TechM5, SGPS group, later bought by Efacec.

Since 2005 he is the President of the Board of Directors of INESC Porto, Associated Laboratory, a leading Portuguese Lab with 400 people and the largest institute of INESC group, with national and international activities in contract research, technology development, consultancy and technology transfer either to existing companies or through launching of new tech-based ventures. Since 2005, INESC Porto has grown 30 % in size and activity, has launched seven new tech-based ventures and started his internationalization. As UTEN Director (since 2006) he has also been deeply involved in international training in technology transfer, in close cooperation with MIT, CMU, UTAustin and Fraunhofer, as well as in technology screening and fast-market access to US markets to early-stage Portuguese companies.

He teaches Innovation Management and Management of Technology chairs in different M.Sc. courses at the Faculty of Engineering and the Faculty of Economics of the University of Porto, as well as at EGP-University of Porto Business School, and his present research interests and activities fall in the innovation management, management of technology and technological entrepreneurship domains.

Among other representation responsibilities, he has been appointed by the Portuguese Minister of Science and Technology as National Delegate, first to the Innovation Program Committee (1996-1998) and later to the GROWTH Program Committee (1999-2001). He has also been member of the board of the Porto Science Park (1998-2002) and of the External Advisory Group to the Thematic Priority 3 of the 6th Framework Program. He is presently member of the General Council of EGP-UPBS and of the General and Supervisory Council of the Business Incubator NET. The academic track record covers over 100 papers in International Conferences and Scientific Journals with refereeing, chapters of books as well as the supervision of five Ph.D. theses and 20 M.Sc. dissertations.


Miguel Amaral

Miguel Amaral has a degree in Economy, a Master Degree in Management of Technology and a PhD degree in Industrial Engineering and Management. He gives lectures in the disciplines of Management, Technology Based Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management at the Engineering and Management Department at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST). He is assistant coordinator of the Master program in Industrial Engineering and Management at IST and a researcher at the Center for Innovation, Technology and Policy Research, IN + / IST, where he runs the Laboratory of Technology Policy and Technology Management. His main research areas are entrepreneurship, occupational choice, technological change and innovation.


Aurora Teixeira

Assistant Professor with Agregação (Habilitation) at FEP (Universidade Porto) and researcher at CEF.UP (Center in Economics and Finance), INESC-Porto (Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering of Porto), OBEGEF (Observatory in Economics and Management of Fraud), and UTEN (The University Technology Enterprise Network).

PhD in Science and Technology Policy at Science and Technology Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex (U.K).

She has published several books and articles in the area of innovation, economic growth, human capital, and scientometrics, including 'Technology Change' (InTech, 2012), 'Strong Patenting, Weak R&D' (VDM Verlag, 2010) and 'Multinational, Clusters and Innovation' (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). Her articles are published in international journals such as Research Policy, Industrial and Corporate Change, Asian Journal of Technology Innovation, Regional Studies, Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, European Planning Studies, China Economic Review, Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Social Indicators Research, European Journal of Scientific Research, Portuguese Economic Journal, Scientometrics, Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, Higher Education, Journal of Academic Ethics, Industry and Higher Education.

She won two scientific prizes: in 2006, the prize 'Foreign Direct Investment – API/Universidade de Coimbra' for the study 'Foreign Direct Investment, Human Capital and Technology: an Application to the Portuguese Case, with a Policy-Making Focus', and in 1999, the prize from the Portuguese Economic and Social Council for the study 'Human capital and innovation capability: a contribution for the study of Portuguese economic growth, 1960-1991'.

She was also awarded with two scholarships (PhD and Sabbatical) by the Portuguese Science and Technology Ministry (Foundation for Science and Technology - FCT), Portugal.


Hugo Horta

Hugo Horta completed his PhD in Management and Industrial Engineering at the Instituto Superior .Tecnico (IST), Technical University of Lisbon, in 2007. His Ph.D thesis focused on funding, diversity and autonomy of academic research in the scope of an evolving global knowledge infrastructure. The Ph.D was carried both in Portugal at the Center for Innovation, Technology and Policy Research (IN+), and abroad at the Engineering and Public Policy Department (EPP), Carnegie Mellon University, in the US and at the Center for Higher Education Policy Studies (CHEPS), University of Twente, in the Netherlands.

After concluding his Ph.D, Hugo Horta started a post-doc focusing on the study of academic inbreeding in Portugal and Japan, through a joint project involving the Centro de Investigação e Estudos de Sociologia, ISCTE, Portugal and the Center for the Advancement of Higher Education (CAHE), Tohoku University, Japan. Throughout this period, he published articles focused higher education diversity, scientific policies and funding, comparative scientific national structures, scientific productivity, internationalization of higher education, and academic mobility in international peer-reviewed journals, such as Management Science, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Science and Public Policy, Higher Education, Higher Education Policy, Studies in Social Science and Asia Pacific Education Review.

He is on the editorial boards of the Higher Education Policy, Asian Pacific Education Review and Mexican Journal of Research in Education. He also co-edited two books and a special issue on "Academic knowledge production, diffusion and commercialization: policies, practices and perspectives" published in 2011, at Science and Public Policy. In 2011, he also co-edited a special issue on "Network ethics in the growing global, multi-dimensional and technological academy" at the International Journal of Cyber Ethics in Education in collaboration with William Boyd from South Cross University, Australia.

After a spell as Advisor of the Secretary of State of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education, from 2010 to 2011, he returned to academia to work as a Researcher. He is the Portuguese National delegate to the ERA Steering Committee on Human Resources and Mobility and the Chair of the ERA Working Group "Grant Portability", analyzing the possibility to establish a grant portability scheme among European countries.


Francisco V Cunha

Francisco Vilhena da Cunha is a program manager and a researcher at the Center for Innovation, Technology and Policy Research (IN +), as well as an Executive Director of the International Risk Governance Council (IRGC) - Portugal, assisting in setting research agendas with the industry, and conducts research related to the risk of de-industrialization and the role of industrialization in promoting socio-economic development and resilience. He also actively collaborates with private firms in competitive intelligence activities and business development. He graduated from Aerospace Engineering at the Technical University of Lisbon and has worked as an advisor to the Secretary of State for Science, Technology and Higher Education in Portugal; coordinated the areas of Intelligence, Air Force, Defense and Industrial Participation (offests) at INTELI, a public-private think tank, and was a consultant in the area of offsets of the International Defense and Security of the NGO Transparency International.

Throughout this period, he represented Portugal in several discussion groups of the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development of the European Commission in the areas of aeronautics, space and security. He has published about the risks of corruption in the military offsets and measures to promote its transparency.


João Claro

João Claro is assistant professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP).

He also holds appointments with INESC TEC, where he heads the Innovation and Technology Transfer Unit, and the University of Porto Business School (UPBS), where he heads the Innovation and Entrepreneurship academic subject area, and has been faculty coordinator of COHiTEC, the MBA technology entrepreneurship and commercialization program. He was recently a visiting scholar with the Engineering Systems Division at MIT.

Most of his current research has been developed in the scope of projects with Eni S.p.A, Portucel Florestal, Grupo Simoldes, and COTEC. He has an undergraduate degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from FEUP (1993), a MSc in Quantitative Methods in Management from UPBS (2002), and a PhD from FEUP with a dissertation in Operations Research and Operations Strategy (2008). Prior to returning to the University of Porto, João was a software engineer and project manager at Edinfor (1994-1998).


Marco Bravo

Marco Bravo has a BS. in Mechanical/Industrial Engineering from the University of Minho; a MS. in Engineering Policy and Management of Technology from the Technical University of Lisbon; and a second MS. in Technology Commercialization from the University of Texas at Austin. In 1998 he did part of his undergrad studies at Mikkeli Polytechnic (Finland), and performed research at Hanover University (Germany) in 1999 and at Carnegie Mellon University in 2006.

He was the Kozmetsky Scholar for academic excellence of the IC2 Institute at the University of Texas at Austin and the outstanding student of the Master of Science in Technology Commercialization at the University of Texas at Austin in 2009. Furthermore, Marco Bravo was awarded with the "Best Thesis 2001" and with the "Innovation Young Engineer 2000" from the Portuguese Engineers Association (Mechanical Engineer College). In 2000, he has been distinguished with the merit award "Guimarães City Hall" (best Engineering student of University of Minho) and with the "Engineer António de Almeida" prize (best student of Engineering and Industrial Management). The year before (1999), he was bestowed with the merit prize of the Portuguese Universities (student of excellence) as well as with the merit honour "University – Industry" (best student of Engineering and Industrial Management) from the Industrial Association of Minho. For three years in a row (1996-1998), Marco Bravo has been recognized with the Scholar Merit Prize of the University of Minho (student of excellence) and back in 1986 has been acknowledged with the primary school Merit Prize of the Martins Sarmento Society (student of excellence).

Marco Bravo possesses significant leadership and managerial experience in multinational business, consulting, academia and government. In academia, he has been a scholar at the University of Minho, and at the Engineering School of the University of Porto. In industry, he has worked at Continental AG in Hanover, Germany and later in the same company in Portugal, first as Production Superintendent and later as Production Manager. Afterwards, Marco Bravo has been Advisor and Chief of Staff of the State Secretary for Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Portuguese Government. He was also the National Project Coordinator of the European-wide Eureka Program during the Portuguese Chairmanship in 2008/200. Currently, Marco Bravo is Project Director for international programs at the IC2 Institute (University of Texas at Austin), with interests on entrepreneurial wealth creation, international innovation, and global technology commercialization.


Roberto Sbragia

Graduated in Business Administration from the University of São Paulo (1974), an MBA from the University of São Paulo (1977) and Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of São Paulo (1982). A post-doctorate in Management of R & D from Northwestern University / Technological Institute / Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences. Currently he is professor at the University of São Paulo, working with the Department of Management, Faculty of Economics, Management and Accounting (FEA), which coordinates the group of studies in Management of Innovation and Technological Projects. Primarily operates in the following areas: innovation, evaluation, industry, technological innovation management and project management.