INNOVATION

João Pedro Ferreira has a Master's degree in Civil Engineering from the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto and graduated in Project Management from Porto Business School.

With a professional career directed towards the area of innovation project management and strategic management for the construction sector, he currently works as Innovation Manager at Grupo ACA, having held, in the past, management positions in consulting and civil engineering companies. 

João Paulo Vieira is currently a member of the Executive Board of Grupo ACA.

Civil Engineer with a degree in Management from Porto Business School, he has vast experience in the construction sector. He was manager of all the activities of Grupo ACA in the province of Huambo, in Angola, activities which included quarries and concrete plants, and production works.

Throughout his professional career, he was also manager of several construction contracts, project manager of real estate investments and production manager for Buildings area.

Bento Aires is a Civil Engineer, President of the Order of Engineers - North Region (OERN) and guest lecturer at Porto Business School (PBS), where he is also coordinator of Executive Programs.

Graduated and Master in Civil Engineering, with post-graduation in Project Management (PBS) and Built Tech (IE-Madrid), he works in project management and consulting. He was project director in engineering design and consulting companies and operations director in a Real Estate Investment and Fund Management Company.

Among other positions, he was coordinator of the Northern Regional College of Civil Engineering (2016-2022), coordinator of the Young Engineers Working Group of the OERN (2011), President of the Executive Committee of the Iberian Congress of Young Engineers (2012) and Chairman of the European Young Engineers Forum (2015).

Fernando Frias is currently a member of the Executive Board of Grupo ACA.

Civil Engineer and senior member of the Order of Engineers he has a professional career with about 30 years of experience in the construction sector. Throughout his professional career he has held site management positions, Road and Infrastructure department direction, having also held senior management positions in national construction companies. 

Given the functions performed, he has a vast international experience related to the construction sector and to the management of large companies.

Diogo Felisberto is the Managing Director at Innovation by Kaizen, the innovation arm of the Kaizen Institute Consulting Group. He is graduated in Industrial Engineering and Management from Porto University and has an Executive Education Innovation degree from Insead.

He has close to 15 years of consulting experience across Western Europe, Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region. Diogo has deep experience supporting Retail, Healthcare and FMCG clients, with a broad functional skill set including corporate strategy deployment, corporate innovation, operational excellence, change management and large-scale transformation/turnaround.

Ana is the Executive Director of the Centre for Business Innovation at Porto Business School.

Throughout her career of over 20 years she has worked in the areas of innovation, management, knowledge valorization and digital transformation. She has a background in Engineering and Industrial Management, which she complemented with courses and training in various areas over the years, mainly in innovation and management.

With international experience, her background comes mainly from industrial companies, as well as from institutions of the Portuguese Scientific and Technological System, having worked in the areas of manufacturing, teaching, consulting, innovation management, digital transformation, technology transfer, entrepreneurship, development and management of digital platforms or communication and backoffice management. She worked for institutions such as INOVA+, COTEC Portugal, University of Aveiro, Vangest Group, INEGI or Philips.

At CBI Ana helps organizations who want to turn innovation, entrepreneurship, digital transformation and sustainability into business reality.

He is the Executive Director of the Innovation Ecosystem at NOVA SBE.

Expert, professor-of-practice and consultant in the areas of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. He is a member of the Berkeley Innovation Forum and an external expert of the European Commission and the OECD for the HEInnovate initiative. Rui is currently a strategic advisor to Sogrape and sits at the Advisory Board of Grow by José de Mello and the Investment Committee of Beta Capital.

He was Executive Director at Porto Business School, where he also founded and directed the Center for Business Innovation and was director of the Postgraduate Program in Business Innovation. He was the founder and coordinator of Porto Design Factory, at Politécnico do Porto, where he managed more than 100 innovation projects with some of the largest companies in the world. In this context, he has integrated several innovation ecosystems, namely the Design Factory Global Network and the Stanford University Global Alliance for Redesign.

Rui was also part of the group of founders of the ScaleUp Porto initiative and works, as a mentor, entrepreneur and consultant, in several entrepreneurship ecosystems and with several startups.

Bruno Serra is currently corporate administrator at Grupo ACA for Portugal.

With a degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Minho and a business degree from Católica Porto Business School, his professional career has been guided by works management and division management positions. He also was responsible for the activities of Grupo ACA in Angola.

As a result of this experience, and having under his responsibility different companies with different scopes of action and located in different regions, he is a single source of knowledge of the Group and of the Construction sector, with a vast international experience in the management of companies from different business sectors.

Fernando Correia is currently Corporate Director of Information Systems at ACA Group.

With a degree in Computer Engineering, he has solid management skills, knowledge consolidated by executive training in reference entities such as Porto Business School or Católica Porto Business School.

With a professional career of almost 30 years in the areas of IT (Information Technology) and Management, he knows the needs of the sector in terms of digital transition.

Joana Resende is the Vice-Rector of University of Porto for Strategic Planning, Knowledge Valorization and Entrepreneurship, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Economics and Management of U.Porto, President of U.Porto Science and Technology Park (UPTEC) and the local coordinator of the European Alliance for Global Health (EUGLOH) at University of Porto. She is also a member of the General Council of INESC-TEC (Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering, Technology and Science). From 2017-2020, she was a member of the Board of Directors of Cef-up (Center for Economics and Finance at University of Porto).

She holds a PhD in Economics and Management Science from Université Catholique de Louvain (joint degree with U.Porto). Her main research areas are industrial organization and digital economics. She is particularly interested in investigating business models and competitive dynamics allowed by new generation digital technologies allowing firms to engage in price and product personalization strategies. Her research has been published in leading international economic journals.

Over time, she has acted as consultant for both private and public entities, in the areas of competition policy, regulation and energy markets.

António Aguiar Costa is an Associate Professor at Civil Engineering and Architecture Department of Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon. He obtained his PhD in Civil Engineering with a thesis focused on Building Information Modelling, e-business and e-procurement.

He is President of the Portuguese Technical Committee for BIM Standardization, CT 197, and member of the European Technical Committee for BIM Standardization, CEN/TC 442. He is also an active participant in other international initiatives, such as the EU BIM Task Group and the CIB TG90 Information Integration Group.

He coordinates several R&D projects and develops work for the European Commission, having participated in several H2020 application evaluation processes and prepared technology assessment reports for ongoing European projects.

Currently his research interests focus on digital transition, specifically Digital Twin, BIM, digital construction, information technologies in construction and intelligent buildings, and sustainability and energy transition, having developed innovative work in the scope of LCA and Circularity.

João Moutinho, PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Porto, is currently Director at BUILT CoLAB.

He was Coordinator of the Mobile and Urban Computing Department and Co-Director of Centro de Computação Gráfica da Universidade do Minho, Assistant Professor, Researcher and FCT PhD Grant Holder of INESC TEC in the Electrical Engineering Department of the Faculty of Engineering of University of Porto, Sub-coordinator of Works at Cabeza & Sastre and Maintenance Engineer of the Rolling Stock of Metro do Porto at Transdev SA.

He is author in several journals, publications, international conferences and co-inventor of two patents. He is, in turn, speaker in several events on Smart Cities, Logistics, Mobility, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), 5G applied to Autonomous Driving and Roadways, expert in the area of digitalization for the European Commission, coordinator of the National Committee of Energy Efficient Buildings and representative of the same theme in the European Construction Technology Platform.

He is also coordinator of the Working Group of Digitalization in Geotechnics in Transport of Comissão Portuguesa de Geotecnica nos Transportes and member of the Innovation Group of Ordem dos Engenheiros - Região Norte. Finally, he is Vice-President of the Board and responsible for the Environment and Heritage Protection Section of a Non-Governmental Organization for the Environment based in the north of Portugal.

Gabriela Teixeira is Partner responsible for the Consulting area at PwC Portugal, Angola and Cape Verde.

At PwC since 1997, Gabriela has more than 20 years of experience in business consulting, advising national and international clients from several geographies, namely Portugal, Angola and Mozambique.

Over the years, Gabriela has assisted several clients in consulting and transformation projects, which gave her a wide degree of experience, transversal to several sectors, and a deep knowledge of the companies' dynamics in several aspects, namely in the analysis of operational efficiency drivers, quality management, process understanding, financial and operational business analysis.