Science

Scientist, best-selling author, speaker and consultant on new perspectives on technology and the future. He is the author of the novel «The Postman» (filmed in 1997 in Portugal as "The Postman: O Mensageiro») and the author of the Hugo Award-winning novels «Startide Rising and The Uplift War», as well as many others. He is a leading commentator and speaker on contemporary trends and his non-fiction book «The Transparent Society» was awarded the Freedom of Speech Award by the American Library Association. His latest novel, «Existence» explores a big question: there are billions of planets capable of supporting life. So where is everyone? The book is a reflection on questions such as: how will we build the days and years to come – and how will we be shaped by the future?


Last updated: June 2015

He is a member of the Luso-Brazilian Philosophy Institute, and of the Centre for Research and Studies in Fine Arts (CIEBA) at the University of Lisbon School Fine Arts, where he is an assistant professor. He teaches Aesthetics, History of Contemporary Art, Theory and History of Sculpture and Theory of Contemporary Art. He has written several books.

Last updated: November 2023

He is a journalist. He directed the «Meios & Publicidade» newspaper and the news office at the Impala group. He was coordinator at the «24 horas» and «Sol» newspapers. He worked at the Lusa press agency, the «Expresso» newspaper and «Sábado», «Superjovem», «Pais & Filhos» magazines, among others. He has published several books.

Last updated: January 2024

A Portuguese neuroscientist, he is the CEO and president of the Allen Institute in the US. Previously, he headed the world’s largest brain research centre, the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behaviour 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: june 2026

He is a coordinating researcher at the University of Lisbon Institute of Social Sciences and professor of Political Science at Universidade Lusófona. He was a visiting professor at Stanford (1993), Georgetown (2004) and an associate member St Antony's College, Oxford (1995).
He was also Senior Visiting Researcher at Princeton (1996), Berkeley (2000 and 2010) and NYU (2017). He was president of the Portuguese Political Science Association. His research interests include authoritarianism, democratisation and transactional justice, political elites and the comparative study of political change.
His many published works include «Political Institutions and Democracy in Portugal: Assessing the Impact of the Eurocrisis» (Co-org. 2019) and «Technocratic Ministers and Political Leadership in European Democracies» (Co-org. 2018).

Last updated: January 2023

Inês Lopes Gonçalves is a radio and television host. On the radio she is currently one of Rádio Renascença's «As Três da Manhã», and on television she hosts the talk show «Traz Pr'á Frente» on RTP and RTP Memória.
She has been one of the faces of the Festival da Canção since 2017. She began her career in information as a journalist at Rádio Renascença, worked for Sport Tv, Canal Q and collaborated with Time Out, Sábado and Expresso magazines.

Última atualização: janeiro de 2022

Full professor, retired, in the Department of Informatics at the University of Lisbon School of Sciences. Founder of the Portuguese chapter of «Internet Society». He has played an active role in the implementation of the internet in Portugal since the 1980s.
He was a member of the Information Society Mission Team, manager of the Information Society programme, president of the National Scientific Computing Foundation (FCCN), coordinator of the National Cybersecurity Centre and also a researcher at INESC.
He has written several scientific works and the book «Cibersecurity», published by FFMS.

Last updated: July 2024

Director of publications and member of the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee, António Araújo was born in Lisbon in 1966. He obtained a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in law at the University of Lisbon and holds a PhD in contemporary history from the Catholic University of Portugal. He was a teacher at the Faculty of Law and teaches now at NOVA FCSH. He is adviser to the Constitutional Court, in unpaid leave, and was consultant to the President of the Republic for political affairs. He is the author of several books and articles in political science, constitutional law and contemporary history. He represents FFMS on the Board of the Portuguese Foundation Center.

Geneticista e investigador na University College London (UCL) é também apresentador de programas de rádio e televisão e autor de vários livros sobre ciência, religião e cinema. No Institute of Child Health da UCL, integrou um projeto de investigação sobre o papel da retina na identificação da base genética de um tipo de cegueira, tendo-se doutorado com uma tese nessa área. Para a BBC, concebeu e apresentou programas como «The Cell on the History of Biology», «Playing God», «The Gene Code» e «Science Betrayed», entre muitos outros. Em «Creation: The Origin of Life & The Future of Life», obra nomeada para o Wellcome Trust Book Prize, defende a teoria de que a vida poderá não ter surgido no «caldo primordial» e debruça-se sobre questões ligadas à biologia sintética, isto é, à modificação dos genes por ação humana e à criação de novos organismos para fins terapêuticos ou industriais. Mais recentemente, publicou «A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes» e «The Book of Humans: The Story of How We Became Us».

Última atualização: novembro de 2019

She has been teaching in higher education since 1999 and is currently a lecturer at the School of Psychology, Education and Sport at Universidade Lusófona do Porto (ULP). She mainly teaches subjects in the fields of Cognitive Psychology and Educational Psychology.
She has been carrying out scientific research for over 20 years, focusing on areas such as learning, attention and human memory. She is a member of the HEI-Lab – Digital Human-Environment Interaction Lab, at Lusófona University and the Psychology Research Centre at the University of Minho. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Minho, where she specialised in School and Educational Psychology. Later, she got her Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology, focusing on "Attention and Working Memory in Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder". Shortly afterwards, she got her PhD in Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Sciences, having explored the mechanisms of operant memory in her thesis.

Last updated: September 2020