João Barros, former CMU Portugal national director (2009-2012) was appointed as associate director of Carnegie Mellon University Africa (CMU-Africa). He will work in partnership with the leadership team to advance the mission of CMU-Africa and oversee administrative functions, including business operations, enrollment management, and student affairs. In his role, he will focus on leading process improvement activities for the College of Engineering’s Kigali, Rwanda location. He will also be responsible for creating professional development opportunities for staff and students and strengthening the research culture at CMU-Africa. The associate director will serve as the institutional representative at times when the director is unavailable.
For the past 25 years, João Barros has specialized in wireless networks and intelligent transportation systems with special emphasis on sensor networks, physical-layer security, network coding, vehicular networks and edge AI. His academic journey includes positions at Technische Universitaet München in Germany, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and Cornell University, in the USA.
In Portugal, he served as full professor at Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto (FEUP) and was the founding director of the Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT). He was also the co-founder and chief executive officer for CMU Portugal tech startups Streambolico and Veniam, recently acquired by Nexar. As a Faculty member of the CMU Portugal Program, he has been advisor of several Ph.D. students in the areas of Engineering and Public Policy (EPP), Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and Computer Science (CS).
João Barros has published more than 180 research papers and holds 22 patents. His work has over 12,000 citations and has been featured by NPR, BBC, and MIT Technology Review. He received multiple awards, including the IEEE Young Researcher Award in 2010 and a teaching award from the Bavarian State Ministry.
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