I was born in Lisbon, 1972, and was raised in the center of Portugal (in a little town called Santa Comba Dão), then I moved to Coimbra at the age of 17 to do my University studies. I took the Licenciatura in Informatics Engineering, Masters and PhD in Artificial Intelligence all there, in the University of Coimbra. The focusing of all the studies in one institution lead me to systematically look for collaborations abroad (and constant visits to other research labs), so during all those years, I collaborated with people from Lisbon, Madrid, Dublin, London and Plymouth. All these became strong influences for the "Creativity and AI: A Conceptual Blending Approach".

During the years of 2001-2005, I did my PhD research, which is the core of the book. I also participated in other projects, such as MusaCazUza, Rebuilder or TextStorm (you can read about these in the publications list) and I also lectured as an Assistant in my Department (of Engenharia Informática da Universidade de Coimbra). I co-organized an international workshop on Computational Creativity (IJWCC-04, Madrid) and on Creativity in Language (in LREC'04, Lisbon), and integrated the Program Committee of these and other events.

During the period of 2005-2007, I re-worked on the PhD thesis document to bring the book "Creativity and AI: A Conceptual Blending Approach", which came out to production on December 2007, and supervised Mateus Mendes and Hugo Oliveira Master's theses (more details in publications list). I also supervised Rui Costa and Hugo Costa to redesign the Mapper module of Divago (the main system of the book) in the Java Language. Together with Pablo Gervás and Raquel Hervás, we made some explorations on applications of Metaphor and Analogy in a Story Telling environment. Go to the Extras to know more!

At about the same period, 2005-2007, another trend started growing strongly in my research life, which became actually my current and exclusive focus since 2008: intelligent transportation systems. More precisely, I have been working on applying machine learning and pattern recognition to the transportation system. I am now based in Singapore, where I work as a Senior Research Scientist in the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology, Future Urban Mobility project (SMART/FM). You can take a look at the MIT ITSLab or SMART/FM websites to know more about this and related projects. In case you wonder what happened to make me change so dramatically, I'd suggest you to read the book, it's all there! Many of the biggest science breakthroughs happen when highly skilled people are able to create new connections, solve problems out of the box, think differently from the others, and are passionate about what they do. And, finally, are persistent enough to do what it takes to learn and do better each time. On my side, I do try! ;-)