Manuel Heitor

Manuel Heitor is Minister for Science, Technology and Higher Education in the Government of Portugal since November 2015. From March 2005 to June 2011 he served as Secretary of State for Science, Technology and Higher Education.

Manuel Heitor is full Professor at Instituto Superior Técnico, IST, the engineering school of the University of Lisbon and was founder and director of the IST´s “Center for Innovation, Technology and Policy Research”, as well as director of the IST´s doctoral Programs in “Engineering and Public Policy, EPP” and in “Engineering Design”. In 2011-12 he was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard.

He earned a PhD at Imperial College, London, in 1985 in combustion research and did post-doctoral training at the University of California San Diego. Then he pursued an academic career at IST, in Lisbon, where he served as Deputy-President for the period 1993-1998. Since 1995, he has been Research Fellow of the IC2 Institute of the University of Texas at Austin. He is a founding member of the S&T Council of the “International Risk Governance Council”, IRGC. He was a co-founder of the European network “science, technology, education and policy for Europe, step4EU”.