Computer scientist · software systems · technical leadership · applied research
Software engineering, technical project management, applied research and Computer Science teaching — with emphasis on ownership, mentoring and rigorous systems thinking.
mail@diogo.site · Porto, Portugal
Research & Teaching — For research, lecturer, teaching-track and professor-track applications: PhD work, systems research, talks, training, mentoring and teaching experience. (tuned for 5 printed pages) · download as typeset PDF
I am a computer engineer from Porto, Portugal. My path into computing began in 2010, shortly after I first got access to a computer: I learnt programming logic, then C, and wrote small scripts to make tedious tasks disappear. The years that followed were spent around UNIX, multimedia and programming — first as a hobby, then as a degree, now as a profession.
I read Computer Science at the University of Porto and am currently a PhD candidate in Electrical and Computer Engineering at its Faculty of Engineering, where my work sits at the intersection of machine perception, interaction design and dependable systems. Alongside research, I provide systems analysis, strategic consulting and tailored training through Apontamento Cordial.
Away from the keyboard, I enjoy music, art and old TV shows, as well as tennis, jazz and contemporary dance, books, board games and time with friends.
Software, systems and research contexts
Engineering ownership. Led funded open-source platform development, coordinated contributors, made architectural decisions, and maintained a public-facing technical roadmap.
Research-to-system translation. Worked across dependable computing, robotics, machine perception and spatial interaction, keeping practical deployment constraints in view.
Milestones, stakeholders, risk and delivery
Execution discipline. I structure projects around clear goals, written decisions, risks, interfaces and incremental delivery.
Stakeholder fluency. I can communicate with engineers, researchers, students, institutional partners and non-technical decision-makers without losing technical precision.
Computer Science and engineering education
Teaching practice. Delivered workshops and talks on Git, dependable computing, embedded systems and decentralised networks.
Pedagogy. Completed evidence-based undergraduate STEM teaching training and a Portuguese trainer certification, with a focus on active learning and practical technical competence.
Apontamento Cordial
Strategic consulting. I conduct in-depth analyses of existing systems and processes, identify improvement opportunities, and recommend strategic solutions that raise productivity.
Tailored training. I design and deliver customised training programmes that meet the specific needs of client companies, equipping teams with the knowledge and skills to use technology effectively and fostering a culture of continuous learning.
Client-centric collaboration. I work closely with clients to gain a deep understanding of their needs and objectives, ensuring that training and consulting services align seamlessly with their strategic goals.
University of Porto
In September 2022 I joined the ANTAEUS project as a member of the on-board data-handling (OBDH) team. Our mission is to design and launch a 2U CubeSat to perform scientific measurements in the 100 keV – 10 MeV energy band and to validate a 2U instrument for future space high-energy astrophysics observatories. The project is led by the University of Coimbra in partnership with the Laboratory of Instrumentation and Experimental Particle Physics (LIP) and the University of Beira Interior. Its main scientific and technological conclusions will contribute to enhanced instrumentation for M-class high-energy astrophysics mission proposals in which the University of Coimbra participates, as well as to high-energy astrophysics based on a CubeSat constellation.
In October 2023 I became a supervisor of the Porto Space Team student society, having joined in July 2022 as head of its Department of Software and Computer Engineering, responsible for data handling in project INVICTUS — a hybrid-propellant (H3 category) rocket for the European Rocketry Challenge (EuRoC 2023), targeting a 3 000 m apogee and a safe parachute-assisted recovery.
GNU social — the free-software social networking platform
GNU social is social communication software written in PHP for public and private communications. It is widely supported, counts the Free Software Foundation among its users, and connects a free network of thousands of communities. Project website: gnusocial.rocks.
In February 2021 I received funding through the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, under the NGI0 Discovery Fund grant agreement No 825322 (2021-02 to 2022-02), to lead the development of version 3, which features a high degree of accessibility, customisation and expansion via plugins. The fund is a European Commission initiative that aims to shape the Internet into an Internet of Humans.
In January 2021 I designed the new architecture for v3, guided the development of the new major release, introduced a new data representation and a new attachment mechanism, and ported much of v2 to v3.
Another highlight from 2021 was authoring FEP-2100, which allows ActivityPub actors of type "Group" or "Organization" to follow other such actors.
Centre for Telecommunications and Multimedia (CTM), INESC TEC
With the advent of machine-learning methods there has been extensive research in human detection, tracking and activity recognition. Inherent to this is the analysis of human pose using skeleton models that connect information extracted from the scene to the human body — information that parametric human models can also use to create virtual 3D representations.
During this internship I surveyed the state of the art in parametric human-body models, implemented the infrastructure required to test them, and produced a final analysis and comparison. The work was distinguished as the best of the MCT category by the jury of the Summer@CTM 2022 internship programme.
Underwater Systems and Technology Laboratory (LSTS), FEUP
Supported by a research grant (BII) from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology. Our interdisciplinary student team further developed a low-cost autonomous surface vehicle, designed a docking station, and began work on a manoeuvre to enable autonomous docking in the LSTS toolchain. The manoeuvre uses a vector-field guidance algorithm to find the optimal trajectory and, when close to the station, tracks a target with the camera module. The vessel uses an IMU, a GPS, a camera and a Raspberry Pi 4.
GNU social
Organised Google Summer of Code (GSoC) at GNU social in 2019 and 2020, mentoring four students, and organised GNU social Summer of Code — a community-funded programme modelled on GSoC — mentoring one student in 2020. In the autumn term of 2020, GNU social was one of the projects in FEUP's Software Development Laboratory master's module (MIEIC-LDSO), where I helped mentor eight fourth-year informatics-engineering students.
Selected contributions with mentored students:
Google Summer of Code is a global programme focused on bringing more student developers into open-source software development through a three-month project with an open-source organisation.
Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto
Supervisor: Prof. João Tasso de Figueiredo Borges de Sousa.
Specialisation: Automation Engineering. Field of study: information engineering, computer science, intelligent systems, robotics, systems and control.
Coursework: real-time embedded systems, intelligent mobile robotics, network science, computer vision.
Activities and societies:
Faculty of Sciences, University of Porto
180 ECTS, of which 54 ECTS in Mathematics.
Activities and societies:
Key contents:
Lunds Tekniska Högskola (LTH), Lund University — Erasmus+/EUGLOH
The course provides an understanding of society's challenges and the functions necessary for resilience in the face of events threatening safety and sustainability, and of approaches for contributing to societal resilience through disaster-risk management and climate-change adaptation for sustainable development in a changing world. It also forms a foundation for research in these areas.
Designed around critical thinking on societal safety and sustainability, it is structured in modules with lectures, seminars and role-play that illuminate central concepts, questions, challenges and functions for societal resilience, following case studies from countries with different conditions.
Lund University School of Economics and Management (LUSEM) — Erasmus+/EUGLOH
The course introduces the development process of an entrepreneurial project, the entrepreneurial mindset needed for that process, and the dynamics of teamwork — skills called for by a global society facing challenges that need new, creative solutions under uncertainty.
It concluded with a two-day hackathon in which teams delivered a solution to a challenge in Global Health. Out of six competing teams, ours was ranked best.
ESA Academy, ESA ESEC
A training session introducing university students to the concurrent design of a CubeSat mission. Guided by ESA experts, students learn to use COMET (Concurrent Model-based Engineering Tool) and to identify design drivers; divided into teams, they first create a subsystem concept and then realise an identified mission concept, function tree and product tree using concurrent engineering.
Key topics:
ESA Academy, ESA ESTEC
ANTAEUS, a prospective Fly Your Satellite! Portuguese team, attended this training week to deepen its knowledge of spacecraft design and project management.
Covered topics included: project management principles and COTS; legal aspects of CubeSat missions; communications and outreach; systems engineering principles; AIV and testing; introduction to MBSE; data-handling subsystem design and verification; flight-software development; EPS design and verification; structural, thermal and mechanisms design and verification; project management for CubeSats; AOCS design and verification; spacecraft operations; TT&C and ground segment; RAMS of CubeSats (FMEA, HSIA, FDIR); space-debris mitigation and trackability; and CubeSat mission analysis — delivered by ESA specialists including Alexander Kinnaird, Tomasz Szewczyk, Volkan Salma, Silvana Radu and David Evans.
UPTEC — Science and Technology Park, University of Porto's business incubator
A programme designed to prepare entrepreneurs for the challenges of creating and developing a new business project. Over three months, participants work with new tools, concepts, structures and people that help validate an idea in the market.
Covered topics included: business models; patents and protecting intellectual property; differentiation and strategy; pricing, marketing and selling; problem mapping; public communication; structuring a pitch; fundraising from venture capital; doing business with the USA; taxes; term sheets; and digital marketing.
CMUP · IST-UL (post-graduate mini-course)
Taught by professors Carlos Daniel Paulino and Giovani Loiola da Silva, and promoted jointly by the University of Porto's Mathematics Centre (CMUP) and the University of Lisbon's School of Engineering (IST-UL).
Topics: Bayes' theorem and the essence of Bayesian methodology; representation of a-priori information (non-informative and natural conjugate distributions); applications to problems with exact or asymptotic solutions (linear Gaussian models, categorical data); inference by stochastic simulation and traditional Monte Carlo; model evaluation, selection and comparison; MCMC methods and their implementation in OpenBUGS/JAGS; applications to practical problems across scientific fields.
Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, University of Porto
A 36-hour course on the acquisition, processing and analysis of EEG signal, held at the Laboratory of Neuropsychophysiology. Topics included introductions to EEG and ERP, ERP research design, principles of EEG data collection, signal processing and data extraction, statistical analysis of ERP data, and reproducibility and open-science practices in EEG/ERP research — taught by Fernando Ferreira-Santos, Fernando Barbosa, Tiago O. Paiva and colleagues.
Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto
Organised by the Research Centre for Systems and Technologies (SYSTEC) in collaboration with the ARISE associated laboratory, providing experience with applications of cyber-physical systems in robotics, energy, mobility, production systems and health.
Covered topics: introduction to drones; deep and machine learning; optimisation; path-following control for autonomous vehicles; optimisation in industrial settings; designing robotic solutions with freeware tools; and electric mobility case studies.
Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto
Topics and lecturers included: terminology and basic concepts in maritime robotics, and models, planning and control — João Tasso de Sousa (LSTS); sensors — Paulo Dias; vehicles — Maria Costa; underwater communications and multi-vehicle planning — José Pinto; the LSTS/OceanScan toolchain — Keyla Lima; AI in maritime robotics — Kanna Rajan (NTNU); ocean observation — researchers from PLOCAN, PROOCEANO, MaREI, CIIMAR and the MIT Media Lab; applications in archaeology — Filipe Castro (Texas A&M); mapping applications — Trygve Fossum (NTNU); the legal regime of maritime robotics — Eliana Silva Pereira (CIIMAR); and mechanical design — João Galante (LSTS).
University of Szeged
Topics: biomedical data collection, signal processing and analysis; artificial intelligence and machine learning in natural-language processing, biological image analysis and gene-expression analysis; image-processing applications; from literature knowledge to mechanistic modelling; health data science and management; statistical decision making; and dissemination of scientific results.
Université Paris-Saclay
Large-scale facilities offer unique opportunities to explore materials and living matter. This four-day intensive course on the SOLEIL synchrotron, the MAX IV synchrotron and the ELI-ALPS laser centre raised awareness of how such facilities contribute to the European research landscape, giving an in-depth overview of career opportunities, operations, techniques and biomedical and environmental applications, and closing with practical sessions on applying for beamtime allocation.
University of Coimbra and NASA
A comprehensive learning experience blending theoretical understanding through a lecture series with hands-on practical training in a capstone project, guided by subject-matter experts. The capstone solidifies the learned skills and fosters close collaboration with leading scientists in the GPM community.
Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (CIRTL)
Objectives: effective teaching strategies and the research that supports them; the value of learning through diversity and strategies to incorporate it in the classroom; and how to assess these pedagogical strategies and decide which to implement.
IEFP — Portuguese Employment and Vocational Training Institute, and CRIAP Institute
Credential ID F751769/2024. Final grade: 5 — Excellent.
Acquired competencies: analysing the context of intervention for a training programme; designing the programme; developing didactic and multimedia resources; planning learning activities; applying techniques of pedagogical interaction and group facilitation; managing diversity in the training context; using and managing collaborative and learning platforms; developing evaluation tools for training and learning outcomes; and assigning and reporting results.
Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (CIRTL)
Covered key learning principles such as the role of mental models and the importance of practice and feedback; fundamental elements of course design, including learning objectives and aligned assessment; and teaching strategies for fostering active learning and inclusive classroom environments.
British Council, via FutureLearn
Tools and approaches for teaching and assessing core skills in the classroom.
ESA Training on ECSS
Objectives: manage a software project for space and ground applications; understand the significance and procedures of the process; know what ESA expects; identify potential sources of project failure as early as possible; and bridge the system and software domains.
Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto
Held 2022-10-08 to 2022-12-05. Objectives: pedagogical preparation of a course; learning objectives and skills; teaching strategies for large classes; introduction to learning assessment; and higher-education pedagogy.
Cambridge Assessment English
Credential ID B6703928. Scores: Reading 200 (grade A, C2); Use of English 201 (grade A, C2); Writing 190 (C1); Listening 193 (C1); Speaking 195 (C1).
Symposium on Electrical and Computer Engineering, DCE23 — Doctoral Congress in Engineering, University of Porto
DCE23, the Doctoral Congress in Engineering, was held on 15–16 June 2023 at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto. This hands-on workshop gave participants the fundamental concepts of version control and the features Git offers for code — or any text, including a thesis.
Topics: rsync, diff and patch; an overview of revision-control systems with briefings on RCS and Subversion; configuring Git and setting up GPG for signed commits; hands-on practice with many Git commands; tags; branching and merging; storage areas; a brief look at Git internals; and version-control etiquette.
Faculty of Engineering (via Porto Space Team) and Faculty of Sciences (via NuCC-FCUP and Hackers at Porto), University of Porto
A one-hour talk delivered twice in May 2023 — on the 4th at the Faculty of Engineering via Porto Space Team, and on the 17th at the Faculty of Sciences via NuCC-FCUP and Hackers at Porto.
Topics: model-driven development; introduction to real-time embedded systems (with emphasis on hard real time); functional, temporal and dependability requirements; execution management; introduction to reliability, availability, maintainability and safety (RAMS); architecture and components in space avionics; and safeguard mechanisms, with emphasis on redundancy.
Spaceway — “Software & Data Engineering in Space” online course
A four-hour lecture in Spaceway's online and live course "Software & Data Engineering in Space". Topics: model-driven development; real-time modelling, scheduling and RTOS; execution management; reliability, availability, maintainability and safety (RAMS); software development methodologies; architecture and components; safeguard mechanisms; and memory management.
Jornadas do Espaço — do Laboratório para a Órbita, Universidade da Beira Interior
A one-hour talk using the ANTAEUS CubeSat as its main case study. Topics: execution management; RAMS; software development methodologies; architecture and components; electronic components; on-board buses and interfaces; determinism; and safeguard mechanisms.
RTP 3, television
A series of six thematic television documentaries addressing essential technological questions: cryptocurrencies and blockchain, social networks and the public space, artificial intelligence and privacy. I discussed the impact of algorithmic decision-making on the content we consume and the discussions we have.
15th U.Porto Young Researchers Meeting (IJUP)
A presentation of FEP-2100 — its context and how we created it. Distinguished as the Best Oral Communication in the Engineering area of this edition.
NLnet, online event
As a developer of the federated universe, I contributed to the first webinar of this event, in which representatives of the European Commission, the European Data Protection Supervisor and the European Parliament discussed the possibilities of federation and how the European Commission could announce relevant events on the fediverse. Through two webinars and a workshop, NGI Zero and the ActivityPub community showcased to national and European administrations how the decentralised social-networking protocol ActivityPub can help European institutions retake their online presence.
NuCC UPdate 2021, online
A brief introduction and overview of an initiative started in 2011 that has been gaining popularity. The talk explored the principles and values of privacy, participation and diversity of this vibrant network, contrasting them with the selfish business practices of the non-neutral exchange platforms populating the rest of the Internet.
Talks@DCC, Faculty of Sciences, University of Porto
ActivityPub is a decentralised social-networking protocol based on the ActivityStreams 2.0 data format: a client-to-server API for creating, updating and deleting content, and a federated server-to-server API for delivering notifications and content. This Talks@DCC took a small tour through the history of the fediverse, the context in which ActivityPub was introduced, and the internals of its implementation — among other challenges in the software and network engineering of a federated social network — ending with the advantages of this kind of platform and the technical complications of building and maintaining one.
Grand Auditorium, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto
I presented a summary of the development and results of the Faculty of Sciences' mentoring programme at the first meeting of U.Porto's transversal programme of peer mentoring.
Happy Code, Maia, Portugal
A three-hour workshop about automation science, complex systems, digital electronics, the Internet of Things, and how those relationships enable the making of robots — with a detailed practical component using sensors and actuators to illustrate the concepts.
INESC TEC
My internship on parametric human-body models was distinguished as the best of the MCT category by the jury of the Summer@CTM 2022 internship programme.
15th U.Porto Young Researchers Meeting (IJUP 2022)
“GNU social v3 and Unbound Actors” was distinguished as the best oral communication in the Engineering area.
European Union Horizon 2020 — grant agreement No 825322
Funding awarded through the EU's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (2021-02 to 2022-02) to lead the development of GNU social v3.
Lund University School of Economics and Management (EUGLOH)
Our team ranked best among six in the two-day hackathon closing the Entrepreneurial Skills module.
IAPMEI · Grant for the Web — for Kult
Kult received IAPMEI's StartUP Voucher full grant (2020-06 to 2021-06) and a Grant for the Web flagship grant (2021-06 to 2021-12).
Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT)
Research initiation grant supporting the robotics internship at LSTS, FEUP.
BEST Porto, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto
Scored 18/20 with my team, placing among the ten podium teams out of forty.