I am Associate Professor at FCT-UNL - Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa(School of Sciences and Technology, NOVA University of Lisbon – Portugal). I am a FCT affiliated faculty member at Departamento de Informática (Dep. of Computer Science) and an integrated research member at NOVA LINCS Research Lab – Nova Laboratory of Informatics and Computer Science, a Research Center hosted at FCT/UNL

I completed my PhD at FCT/UNL in April 2000. I received the MSc degree in Informatics Engineering in 1995 from FCUL - Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa(Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon) and I hold a BSc degree in Electrical Engineering obtained in 1986 from FEUP - Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto(Faculty of Engineering at Oporto University) and in 1985, from Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade de Angola(Faculty of Engineering, University of Angola).

I am currently a member of the ACM, ACM - SIGSAC, ACM/Eurosys, IEEE, EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) and ISOC PT (Internet Society Portuguese Chapter), where I served in the Board of Directors in the period between 2016 and 2020.

Teaching

I started my academic career in higher edication in 1982. In 1982-1987 I served as teaching assistant at Faculty of Engineeirng - University of Luanda (Angola), at the Department of Electrical Enginering and Telecomunications (DEE-FE-UA). In 1987-1989 I worked as invited teaching assistant at Faculty of Sciences and Technology, Nova University of Lisbon - Dep. of Informatics (DI-FCT-UNL) and in the period 1989-1994 I served as teaching assistant at Facuilty of Sciences - University of Lisbon (FCUL). After 1995, I started my career as integrated teaching assistant at the Dep. of Informatics, Faculty of Sciences and Technology - Nova University of Lisbon (DI-FCT-UNL) during the period between 1995 and 2000. After the conclusion of my PhD in April 2000, I was recruited as Assistant Professor at FCT-UNL, obtaining a permanent position after 2005.

Before 2000 I also worked as invited professor at the University of Rutgers (USA) - Dep, of Computer Science. I was also invited to work in collaboration, as assistant researcher (from 1993 to 1995) in two european ESPRIT II research projects. These activities were performed with different research activities developed at Chorus Systèmes Labs (a French Company) in Fracce - St Quentin-en-Yvelines, and in a research collaboration with a Distributed Systems Research Group at INRIA, Rocquencourt.

My teaching activities in DI-FCT-UNL include the supervision of more than 60 MSc students, orientations of 4 PhD students and more than 120 BSc students in their final projects. My teaching tasks also covered more than 50 editions of diffrent courses in BSc, MSc, and PhD curricular plans, offered at DEE-FE-UA, DI-FC-UL and DI-FCT-UNL. Since 2000, my teaching activities at DI-FCT-UNL included the creation, responsibility and Lectures (theretical classes) on different BSc, MSc and PhD courses on topics such as: Computer Systems Security, Networks Security, Computer Networks, Dependable Distributed Systems, Advanced Topics in Distributed Systems, Security for Sensor-Based Networks, and specialized modules on Privacy-Preserved Outsourced Cloud-Storage, Homomorphic Encryption, Privacy-Engineering and Cloud-Security Solutions using Hardware-Assisted Trusted Execution Environments.

Research

My research interests are focused on dependability, security and privacy solutions for computer systems and networks, and for large-scale distributed systems and applications. My research orientation is closely alligned with the strategic plan of NOVA LINCS (see: https://nova-lincs.di.fct.unl.pt/research), and the current ongoing research goals of the Computer Systems Research Group (see: https://nova-lincs.di.fct.unl.pt/research_areas/1#information). Currently, I am particularly interested in finding novel solutions for supporting the operation of trusted future large-scale distributed systems and how to support secure and privacy-enabled emerging distributed computing pipelines covering components in Users-Edge-Cloud services continuums. In my research, I study new approaches in the targeted context, including (i) new cryptographic constructions and algorithms for usable/practical secure and privacy-preserved data-management solutions usable for outsourced and dependable computing models (ii) trustworthy support for privacy-preserved data-flows and computations in the integration of user-applications and cyber-physical devices with edge-cloud continuums,(iii) programming support for trustworthy portable functions executing in deployable middleboxes in different locations of outsourced pipelined computing environments, and (iv) design models for confidential computing with isolated hardware-assisted trusted execution environments (TEEs).

Most of my current research interests are oriented to understand new chllenges and issues of privacy preservation, data confidentiality and confidential computing for distributed computing systems. I believe these are important complementary dimensions that must be addressed by design, together with dependability properties or arguments, as different facets of dependability arguments in systems' design. To an even greater extent than with many other security, reliability and availability research problems, my scientific understanding of new challenges lags far behind the need for rigorous defensive or preventive strategies. In my vision of more effective reasoning about privacy challenges in the targeted distributed computing environments, I believe that we must go to find ways to support randomness with fully decentralized trust, characterize the limit of adversarial uncertainty and not-understood indeterminism and requirements on inference control on observable data-access, management operations and correlated runtime computations in outsoured infretsructures. Not surprinsingly, several threads related to security and privacy topics in my research must be understood in multidisciplinary views and collaborations. Currently I have a particular attention on how to support privacy-preserved machine learning with confidential computing arguments and what new programming models and paradigms are particularly emerging for privacy-aware programming.

Academic extensions 

Since 1994, I dedicated a particular effort in developing extension activities and collaborations, trying to propose solutions for societal changes. In this effort, I created four software engineering startup companies (between 1994 and 2012) and a creation (after 2016) of a joint-venture associated company in a consortium of industrial partners, in designing and operating privacy-enabled blockchain platforms for regulated fintech solutions in Europe. Being a partner and co-founder of those clmpanies, I served as non-executive director, chief-advisory engineer, and R&D software architect in different projects for the creation of new products, together with partners and customers in the Fintech sector, and in cooperation with different banks in Portugal (ex., CGD Group, Montepio Geral, BANIF, Novo Banco), Germany (ex., Deutche Bank), Brasil (Banco do Brasil), Angola (Banco Valor and Bamco Econónico), South Africa (Standard Bank), in the development of new products and services currently used in a large context of users (ex., Caixa Directa OnLine, Caixa eBanking, DB Online, etc). Products rsulting from the created companies range from Internet-based banking solutions (for retail and corporate electronic banking platforms), Omnichannel banking platforms for multi-modal interaction, middleware integration systems for different core-banking platforms in the market, internet and mobile payment gateways in core banking and operators of payment-networks, and blockchain platforms for compliant payments and privacy-preserved transactions in the regulated banking market.

Another facet of important activities in academic extensions, is focused on different collabiorations, consultancy or participation on education programs in collaborative activities with societal projections. In the context of Public-Administration sectors, I worked in collaborations involving the Potuguese Government and Agencies (ex., RING Network/CEGER, Comissão Nacional de Eleições, Ministério da Defesa Nacional / Instituto de Defesa Nacional,  Ministério da Justiça, Agência Nacional de Inovação, Centro Nacional de Cibersegurança or Banco de Portugal). Other interesting activities at the EU comission coordination level included collaborations with ENISA, European Central Bank and participation in Advisory Boards for Evaluations of Project Proposals in diferent Funding Programs).