Science Office

To ensure the scientific and technical quality of their products and projects, the Science Office constituted an Advisory Board which will validate the company’s work in various areas of science and technology. Several renowned professionals in the field of science, design, audiovisuals and science communication, working both in Portugal and abroad, are already part of this Board. They are:

Maria Cruz

Maria José Cruz obtained her degree in Physics from Lisbon’s Instituto Superior Técnico and received her PhD in Astrophysics from the University of Oxford. A three-month stint as an adviser at the UK Parliamentary Office and Science and Technology sparked her interest in science communication and policy. After that, she worked as a post-doc, coordinating and editing the ASTRONET Infrastructure Roadmap, the first-ever strategic plan for European astronomy. In her spare time, Maria has volunteered for Sense About Science, a charitable trust that promotes public access to evidence-based science. Recently, she took a position at Science magazine as an associate editor in astrophysics, astronomy and planetary science.

More information: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/mariajcruz

Frederico Duarte

Having graduated in Communication Design at the University of Lisbon, Frederico worked as a designer in Malaysia and Italy. From 2003 to 2006 he joined the team of Experimenta, an organization dedicated to promoting design, where he worked in programming, production and communication in ExperimentaDesign, the Lisbon Design Biennale. Since 2007 he works as a design critic, curator, and writer on several projects and for national and international publications. In May 2010 Frederico graduated from the Design Criticism MFA at the School of Visual Arts in New York, where he developed the project Alvorada: an exploration of Brazilian design. More information at www.05031979.net

João Fernandes

João Fernandes has a PhD in Astrophysics, University of Paris, and is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Mathematics of the University of Coimbra, Portugal. He is an astronomer at the Astronomical Observatory of the University of Coimbra and conducts his research in stellar evolution and history of astronomy. He has published around 50 papers and contributions for meeting proceedings, in both fields. In 2007, João Fernandes was appointed by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), as the International Year of Astronomy 2009 Single Point of Contact for Portugal and he is also the Portuguese member at the ESO Science Outreach Network (ESON). João is a member of the IAU and the European Astronomical Society.

Matthew McCool

Matthew McCool studied neuroscience at the SIU School of Medicine, literature at the University of Illinois, and intercultural pragmatics at New Mexico State University. He currently teaches technical and science writing at Southern Polytechnic State University in Marietta, GA, USA. Matthew McCool is the author of Reaching a Global Online Audience (O’Reilly) and Writing Around the World (London: Continuum).

Zita Martins

After obtaining a degree in Chemistry at Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, Zita did a PhD earned in Astrobiology at the Leiden University, in The Netherlands. Between 2007 and 2009 she was a Research Associate at the Imperial College in London. Currently, she is a Royal Society University Research Fellow at the Imperial College in London.

More information: http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/zita-martins/9/925/b8