José Manuel Mendonça

Professor José Manuel Mendonça is Scientific Director for UTEN Portugal.

He a Full Professor at the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management of the Faculty of Engineering, Univ. of Porto and President of the Board of Directors of INESC Porto. He is also a non-executive member of the board of Fibersensing, SA, of the Support Group of the Manufuture European Technology Platform, of the MIT Portugal EDAM Management Board and he is the National Scientific Coordinator of the UTEN Network.

In the first ten years of his career he gained experience in R&D work in Denmark (Denmark Technical High-School), United Kingdom (Imperial College of Science and Technology - London) and Germany (Fraunhofer-IPA) in the areas of industrial electronics, industrial automation and manufacturing management systems. He also worked in industry in Portugal (EDP) and Switzerland (BBC).

These were followed by ten years at the leading R&D Institute INESC, which ensured seniority in contract research and consultancy for the industry, being responsible for a group of 40 people (7 Ph.D.’s and 12 M. Sc. ’s) and an annual turnover of 1,5 million €. Management experience was gained in many national and EC funded projects (Esprit - Integration in Manufacturing), most notably being the Technical Coordinator of the Project 5478 Shop-Control (1990-93) and the Project Manager of Esprit Project-8865 Real-I-CIM (1994-96). A number of industrial prototypes and systems resulting from the R&TD work have been installed in industry and some niche products have been transferred to vendors. He has been consultant for the EC-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 (Innovation and SME’s) calls for proposals.

Between 1996 and 2001, he has assumed responsibilities downstream in different fields of innovation and technology transfer, being 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 (Northern region of Portugal, Porto Science and Technology Park and Innovation Relay Center (IRC) technology transfer activities. 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 in NTBF’s.

Among other representation responsibilities, 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 (19898-2002) and of the Advisory Group to the Thematic Priority 3 of the 6th Framework Program. 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. and 20 M. Sc. theses.