INESC TEC Unit Manager is the new Director of CMU Portugal
João Claro, manager of INESC TEC’s Innovation and Technology Transfer Unit (UITT), a position he shares with Alexandra Xavier, is the new director of the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program (CMU Portugal). INESC TEC’s researcher will be taking over João Barros, a professor and researcher at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP), who had been leading the partnership for the last three years.
30th January 2013
For the manager of UITT, the new position brings a combination of pride and responsibility as this is an international partnership, funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), that involves nine Portuguese Universities (Aveiro, Católica Portuguesa, Coimbra, Lisbon, Madeira, Minho, Nova de Lisboa, Porto, Técnica de Lisboa), four associate laboratories (INESC ID, INESC TEC, IT and ISR), the Carnegie Mellon University and over 80 business partners. João Claro will be leading the programme with José Manuel Fonseca de Moura, a Portuguese researcher leading the partnership at Carnegie Mellon University.
The objective is to “consolidate the extremely positive results that CMU Portugal has achieved thus far, an aspect which has been highlighted by all external evaluations” (João Claro).João Claro’s objective is to “consolidate the extremely positive results that CMU Portugal has achieved thus far, an aspect which has been highlighted by all external evaluations”. This success is confirmed by the 25 collaborative research projects, by over 270 students and 150 professors involved in the programme.
For João Claro, the ambition for this new stage means “working to increase sustainability and the impact that dual training programmes have, as well as turning the research results achieved in the first stage of the project into products and services and launching new Entrepreneurial Research Initiatives”. The new national director explains that these initiatives “will be greater than the projects of the first stage of the programme, and that they will be investing in multidisciplinary collaborations, in close collaboration with research and advanced training activities, in order to solve concrete problems that lead to relevant scientific challenges”. This way, the researcher aims at “complementing the international innovation dynamics that the programme wants to bring to ICTs in Portugal”.
Specialised in innovation and entrepreneurship, João Claro believes that his professional experience will be an asset to CMU Portugal, which promotes research between Portuguese universities and companies and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in the US, something that can have a significant impact on Portuguese economy. Other than a researcher at INESC TEC, João Claro is also a professor at FEUP and at Porto Business School (PBS), where he manages the COHiTEC, a technology-based entrepreneurship programme of the Magellan MBA.