An award-winning wireless engineer, academic leader and passionate entrepreneur, João loves to turn complex theorems and algorithms into products and services that can make a real difference in people’s lives. After more than a decade developing new wireless networking technologies at Technische Universitaet Muenchen, Universidade do Porto, MIT, and Carnegie Mellon, João founded two venture-backed startups, Streambolico and Veniam, where he serves as board director and CEO respectively. His work has led to 160 science and technology papers, as well as feature articles by NPR, BBC, MIT Technology Review, The Atlantic, and TechCrunch.
João Barros has received several awards, including the 2010 IEEE Communications Society Young Researcher Award for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region, the 2011 IEEE ComSoC and Information Theory Society Joint Paper Award, the 2012 BES National Innovation Award, the 2013 Building Global Innovators Grand Prize (ISCTE-IUL and MIT) and a state-wide best teaching award by the Bavarian State Ministry of Sciences, Research and the Arts.
João Barros has a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology from the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (Germany), his undergraduate education in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Universidade do Porto, Portugal and Universitaet Karlsruhe, Germany, and a performing arts degree in flute from the Music Conservatory of Porto, Portugal.
autonomous vehicles
Connected Vehicles Make Cities Smarter
With the vast majority of the human population soon in cities, we know we have to leverage information technology to enhance city services, increase safety and improve quality of life. It turns out that the cheapest solution to acquire massive amounts of actionable urban data as well as expand urban wireless coverage may be to rapidly connect as many vehicles moving around the city as possible. An effort to do that in Porto, Portugal is well underway.
Citizenship and Companies in the Connected Social City
New York is diving into connectedness, with sidewalk WiFi, a raft of smart systems for traffic, energy, and health, and other civic innovations. But what does it mean for those that inhabit our city? How does it shift the role of business, people, and government?
Conferences
NYC 16
For four years, the impact of tech and increasing interconnection on the economy and urban revival has shaped the agenda for our annual one-day Techonomy Detroit conference.
