João Claro

Area Director for Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship
in Portugal

Biography

João Claro is Chief Executive Officer of INESC TEC and Associate Professor of Industrial Engineering and Management at Faculdade de Engenharia of the Universidade do Porto (FEUP). At INESC TEC, he is also a researcher in the Centre for Innovation, Technology, and Entrepreneurship, and at FEUP he directs the Doctoral Program in Engineering and Public Policy. He is affiliated with Porto Business School (PBS), where he is a member of the Academic Council, and heads the Entrepreneurship and Innovation academic area.

Between 2013 and 2017, João Claro was the National Director of the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program, an international partnership in Information and Communication Technologies between Portuguese universities, research labs and companies, and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), funded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia.

In 2008, he was a visiting scholar with the Engineering Systems Division at MIT. In the past 15 years, he has taught and mentored more than 150 technology commercialization teams from Portuguese universities, research labs and companies, in multiple initiatives with ANI, COTEC Portugal, FCUP, FEUP, INESC TEC, PBS, and CMU.

João Claro holds a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from FEUP (2008), an MSc in Quantitative Methods in Management from PBS (2002), and an undergraduate degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from FEUP (1993). Prior to returning to the University, he was a software engineer and information systems project manager at Edinfor (1994-1998).