Rui Baptista is Full Professor in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Engineering and Management Department of Instituto Superior Técnico (IST). Previous academic posts include the Department of Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, and the Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University Bloomington. From 2012-15 Rui was Full Professor and Chair in International Entrepreneurship at Brunel Business School, Brunel University London.

Rui was Head of the Department of Engineering and Management of IST from 2015-2020 and President of the Centre for Management Studies (CEGIST) from 2010-2012, and a Research Professor (External) with the Max Planck Institute (2004-2010).

Rui holds a Ph.D. from London Business School, University of London. Rui’s research and teaching interests are in entrepreneurship and innovation, and their relationship with industry dynamics, labor markets, regional development. He is Editor of Small Business Economics – An Entrepreneurship Journal. He has published in, among others: Research Policy; Technological Forecasting and Social Change; Journal of Business Venturing; European Economic Review; Regional Studies; International Journal of Industrial Organization; International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal; Journal of Evolutionary Economics; and Annals of Regional Science.

Joana Mendonça is Associate Professor with Habilitation at Instituto Superior Técnico of the University of Lisbon. She is currently vice-president at Instituto Superior Técnico, responsible for the Oeiras Campus.

She was President of the Board of the Nacional Innovation Agency in Portugal (ANI) between May 2021 and March 2023. Between 2010 and 2012, she was Deputy Director at the Directorate for Education and Science Statistics (DGEEC). She was scientific director of the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Partnership (2012-2021) and scientific coordinator at the Center of Engineering and Product Development, CEiiA, (2018-2021). During 2016, she was an assistant to the Minister for Economy for issues related to Innovation and Technology and in 2009-2010, she was an assistant to the Secretary of State for Science, Technology and Higher Education, both in the Government of Portugal.

She is a member of the Center for Innovation, Technology and Policy Research, IN+, where she led the Laboratory of Technology Management and Policy. Her research focuses on management of technology and innovation, technology commercialization and adoption. She teaches Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management and Design Thinking to Masters and PhDs students.

Jorge de Brito is Full Professor in the Civil Engineering, Architecture and Environment Department of Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon, Portugal. He is the Director of the Eco-Construction and Rehabilitation Doctoral Program from FCT. He is co-coordinator of CIB W80 (Service Life Prediction) and the coordinator of CIB W80 (Building Pathology). He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Building Engineering. He was the recipient of the UTL 2011 and UL 2016 Scientific Productivity awards. Over the last 20 years, he has been actively engaged in the edition, reviewing and writing of papers in international peer-reviewed journals.

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”.

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.