Maria da Graça Carvalho - Biography#

Maria da Graça Carvalho is a Full Professor at the Instituto Superior Técnico (Faculty of Engineer of the University of Lisbon) and has acquired 30 years of experience in research in the areas of energy, climate change and science, technology and innovation policy. She has also been a member of the Board of Directors and President of the Scientific Board of the Instituto Superior Técnico (more than 10 000 students) as well as being a member of the National Council for Education and of the National Council on Environment and Sustainable Development.

She was the founder of a research group of 50 people at the Instituto Superior Técnico. She has published over 100 articles in international scientific journals and more than 200 articles in conference proceedings as well as writing 3 and editing 15 books. She has founded and she was the first Editor-in-chief of "Clean Air – International Journal on Environmental Combustion Technologies" (Gordon and Breach Publishers/Taylor & Francis). She coordinated more than 20 European consortia and she act as chair in several international panels, such as Chair of the Evaluation Panel of the “Engineering Sciences Panel of the Marie Curie” and she was National Delegate of several European Programmes, such as the JOULE/Thermie Programme and Member of the several Framework Programme Advisory Groups. Her main area of research was initially Energy, Climate Change and she gave an important contribution to the mathematical modelling of complex flows, combustion and radiative heat transfer. In the last 15 years, she has devoted herself to research in the areas of science, innovation and higher education policies, evidence based policy making and ethics in science and new technologies.

She is a member of 22 national and international scientific associations and fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), of the World Academy of Art and Science(WAAS) and has been a Deputy President of the Portuguese Institute of Engineers and remains a fellow of the Portuguese Institute of Engineers, of the Portuguese Academy of Science, of the Royal Academy of Engineers of Spain and a founder of the Portuguese Academy of Engineers (she is Member number 2). She has been an active collaborator of EASAC-European Academies Science Advisory Council and the EuroCASE-European Council of Applied Sciences Technologies and Engineering since the outset.

Maria da Graça Carvalho has been awarded the title of “Great Official of the Order of Public Instruction” by the President of Republic of Portugal as a part of the International Women Day Programme (8 March 2002). She has also been admitted to the honoured with the Chancellery of the International Order of Merit of the Discoverer of Brazil and, in this context, was awarded the Great Cross (26 April 2005). She is member of the Chancellery of the Orders of Merit of the Portuguese Republic.

She was the 2016 recipient of the IUMRS International Union of Materials Research Societies Global Leadership and Service Award that honours individuals in materials research, education and policy and recipient of the first Prize Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo, a career prize to honour outstanding women scientists and engineers named after the former Portuguese Prime Minister Maria da Lourdes Pintasilgo. In 2008, in the scope of the celebration of the XV Anniversary of the CIRCE Foundation (University of Saragoza), Maria da Graça Carvalho receive the CIRCE Prize due to the promotion of the research in the area of energy efficiency.

Maria da Graça Carvalho is currently member of the Unit “Scientific Advice Mechanism” of DG Research and Innovation of the European Commission. Previously, she was Senior Advisor to the European Commissioner on Research, Science and Innovation and Principal Adviser to the President of the European Commission. This was a post that she had already occupied from 2006 to 2009 and was responsible for the areas of Science, Research, Higher Education, Innovation, Energy and Climate Change. She returned to this post in 2014, after 5 year as a Member of the European Parliament. In these functions in the European Commission, she played a crucial role in the launching of FP7 and the ERC, in the design and the development of the European Institute of Technology and Innovation, in the inclusion of social innovation in the European programmes and policies, in the redesign and redefinition of the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies (EGE), in the design of the European Strategy of Energy and Climate Change, in the establishment of a Chief Scientific Adviser and the design and establishment of the European Commission’s Scientific Advice Mechanism (SAM).

Maria da Graça Carvalho was a member of the European Parliament in the EPP group from 2009 to 2014. She sat on the Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) Committee as a full member and was a substitute member of the Committee on Budgets as well as being substitute member of the SURE-Special committee on the policy challenges and budgetary resources for a sustainable European Union after 2013. In the Budgets and SURE Committees, she acted during the 5 years as permanent EPP shadow rapporteur for the science and innovation budget and as rapporteur for the space budget. She was also a full member of the ACP-UE Joint Parliamentary Assembly and was elected co- President of the Economic Development, Finance and Trade Committee of ACP-UE Joint Parliamentary Assembly. She was substitute member in the Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union for the Mediterranean.

As a MEP, she was appointed the rapporteur of the Specific Programme Implementing HORIZON 2020 and of the report on Simplification of the Rules of Participation in the European Programs for Research and Innovation. In 2011, she was awarded the Prize for the best MEP in the area of Research and Innovation.

She was Minister of Science and Higher Education of the XV Constitutional Government of Portugal and Minister of Science, Innovation and Higher Education of the XVI Constitutional Government, Director-General of GRICES-Office for International Relations in Science and Higher Education.

April 2017