Science

A Portuguese neuroscientist, he is the CEO and director of the world's largest brain research centre, the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute in the US. He is a professor at Columbia University in New York. He researches the neurobiology of action in health and disease. His laboratory uses approaches from genetics, electrophysiology, optics and behaviour to investigate the mechanisms that underlie action activation and action learning. His findings have led to new hypotheses about the mechanisms underlying the creation of movement and motor dysfunction in Parkinson's disease.
He graduated from the University of Lisbon in 1996 and started the GABBA programme (Graduate Programme in Areas of Basic and Applied Biology) at the University of Porto the following year. He did post-doctoral studies with Alcino Silva at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) and then post-doctoral work with Miguel Nicolelis at Duke University.
He was director of Champalimaud Research and deputy director and researcher of the Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme. In 2012, he became an international early career scientist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and received the Young Researcher Award from the Society for Neuroscience. He is President of the American-Portuguese Biomedical Research Fund.
He was awarded the Ariëns Kappers Medal of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and the U19 Brain Initiative Award (15.3 million dollars over five years). He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine. He is a Commander of the Order of Sant'Iago da Espada (2014) and received the silver medal from the Portuguese Ministry of Health (2014).

Last updated: November 2021

Neurologist and Assistant Professor of Neurology at Yale University School of Medicine, USA. He is the editor of Science-Based Medicine, a website dedicated to exploring science issues in medicine.

Last updated: November 2023

Journalist and science editor at the «Público» newspaper.

Professor of Digital Media at the Nova School of Social and Human Sciences, where he founded and coordinates INOVA Media Lab, a research and development laboratory working in the areas of immersive and interactive narrative, the social impact of Artificial Intelligence, web platforms and social media, innovation and digital transformation, information visualisation and science communication. He coordinates the Master’s degree in New Media and Web Practices and is part of the Council of Europe's group of experts on Artificial Intelligence and Education. He is the author of several scientific articles and book chapters published internationally. He was awarded the German Marshall Fund of the United States Fellowship (2016) and the Calouste Gulbenkian – Knowledge Award (2019), for co-coordinating the scientific dissemination programme 90 Seconds of Science.

A political philosopher, he was professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and was a visiting professor at Harvard and Yale. He also taught Political Science in Oxford.
He is the author of several books, including «False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism» and «Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals». More recently, he published «Feline Philosophy» in 2021. He writes regularly for The Guardian and the New York Review of Books.

An astrophysicist, he teaches at Oxford University. Researcher at the University of California (Berkeley) and at CERN (Geneva).
He has written for Nature, Science, Physics World, BBC Focus and The Guardian, as well as other renowned journals.
He has written several books. His latest, «The Perfect Theory: A Century of Geniuses and the Battle over General Relativity» has been published in over 20 countries.