About me
Feliz Gouveia graduated in Electrotechnical Engineering, Digital Systems and Computers, from the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto in 1986. He had his PhD in Computer Engineering from the Université de Technologie de Compiègne, France, in 1992. At Compiègne he worked as project director for technology transfer and cooperative research in corporate knowledge management and artificial intelligence at the International Institute for Artificial Intelligence from 1992 to 1994, working with large multinational companies and organizations such as Solvay, Alenia Aeronautica, Framatome, Aerospatiale, and the European Space Agency / European Space and Technology Center. He was then invited to the Federal Center for Technological Education in Curitiba, Brazil, to help set up their first PhD programme, leading later to the recognition of the institute as Federal Technological University. In 1995 he was awarded a one year post-doc grant at the Artificial Intelligence and Robotics group at Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, where he worked in AI and autonomous mobile robotics. He prepared there a successful European grant with Latin America countries. After the grant, he was invited as a professor to the Fernando Pessoa University, Porto, with the charter of preparing the technical infrastructure of the University, including a network of 500 Ethernet access points, the web strategy (just starting in Portugal), and the laptop project. The laptop project allowed each freshman, around 700, to own a laptop to use in the classroom. The project was a success, motivating students and instructors, and solving the challenge of technical assistance, training and development of course content for the students. A couple of years later almost every university student owned a laptop, being considered standard academic material. Meanwhile, he participated in more than 20 competitive research projects, funded by the European Union, Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, Portuguese Ministry of Culture and public and private organizations. Knowledge representation, presence research and virtual reality, in the EU Future and Emerging Technologies programme, and artificial intelligence for automatic assessment of seismic risk, using deep learning, were some of the research areas. He was a founding member of the AFCET Multi-Agent systems group, from 1992 to 1994, a member of the Sciences Cognitives et Epistémologie of the Université de Technologie de Compiègne, from 1990 to 1994, and currently a full member of the Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science research center, assessed as Excellent by the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation. From 2002 to 2010 he was associated director of the Media, Interface and Network Design Lab (MIND Lab), a network of several universities in the United States and Europe, based at the Michigan State University. During that period the University participated in research and exchange programmes, in the area of human computer interaction, virtual reality and interaction design. He leaded the Virtual University programme, from 2004 to 2014, implementing and contributing code to an open source Learning Management System (Apereo’s Sakai) for all courses at the University, being assessed by students and staff as one of the most successful services. One of the project staff was awarded a Sakai Fellow award. He has more than 60 scientific publications, and authored a Database Systems textbook, currently in the second edition. He acts regularly as expert for the European Comission’s Horizon programme. He is currently director, since 2019, of the Faculty of Science and Technology. He was the first president of the Scientific Council of the University.