José Fiadeiro - Biography#

José holds a "licenciatura" (five-year degree) in Mathematics from the University of Lisbon, and an MSc and a PhD in Mathematics from the Technical University of Lisbon. He was awarded a national prize for work done during his MSc and an IBM Scientific Award for work resulting from his PhD. José was also awarded one of the first EU mobility fellowships, which he used for post-doctoral work at Imperial College London.

José joined Royal Holloway in August 2012 as Head of Department, after spending ten years at the University of Leicester, five of which as Head of Department. In this capacity, and in both cases, he led a change process that dramatically improved the curriculum, its delivery, and external engagement in research and teaching. He have also held visiting research positions at Imperial College London, King’s College London, Rio de Janeiro (PUC), Pisa, SRI International, Barcelona (UPC) and NASA Ames.

José's mathematical background has allowed him to develop new methods and techniques for the specification and design of complex software systems, an area in which his international leadership is recognised; he chaired the IFIP WG1.3 for six years; he was one of the initiators of ETAPS (the flagship European event for software science), having organised the first conference, been its first treasurer, and chaired its steering committee for three years; and he created with Jan Rutten the CALCO (algebra and co-algebra in computer science) series of conferences. He has been PI or co-PI of several projects funded by the EU, the UK (EPSRC and the Leverhume Trust), and the Portuguese Research Council. José has supervised nine PhD students to completion.

José is a member of the EPSRC panel and is frequently invited to chair or join evaluation panels across Europe. For example, he chaired one of the committees that evaluated all Belgian (Wallonie-Bruxelles) HEI's in Informatics – the final report led the government to make important changes to the curricula and teaching provision; in France, he was a member of the panel that evaluated INRIA, amongst others.

José has a long-standing collaboration with a Portuguese SME – ATX Software, now Softmorphis. He has co-authored more than 30 papers with its CEO – Luís Andrade, which build on his work on coordination models and languages. The results have been incorporated in the technologies that the company uses for modernising legacy systems. He was also principal investigator of one of the first Marie Curie Transfer-of-Knowledge Industry-Academia Partnerships, which was awarded to the University of Leicester and ATX Software.