TEDxEdges

Álvaro Santos Pereira is professor in the Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada), where he teaches the disciplines of Economic Development and Economic Policy. He is a professor at the University of British Columbia, where he teaches macroeconomics. He already taught in the departments of Economics, University of York (2005-2007) and the University of British Columbia (2000-2004). Graduate in economics in 2003 from the Simon Fraser University. Licensed by the University of Coimbra. He has collaborated on a number of newspapers like PUBLICO. Since 2001, works in the Diário de Notícias and the Diário Económico, and has written for magazine Exame, and the newspaper Expresso. He was born in 1972 in Viseu. He is the author of the blog Desmitos .

Luis is a pionner in blogging and the creator of www.estounanet.com back in 2003 when blogging was not common at all. He started telling stories of his voyages around the World and new friendships. One day he got struck by Antarctica, the South continent.

Luis (aka the Portuguese Human Penguin) is going give us a talk on "Antarctica, blogging for a dream". He is going to explain us why we should vote for him at Blog your way to Antartica, and why we should do our best to preserve this wild but very fragile part of nature.

Francisco Veloso is an Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University and in the Business School at Universidade Católica Portuguesa. Francisco's scholarly work focuses on how firms and regions develop and leverage scientific and technical capabilities for economic growth. He has published in leading academic journals, including the Academy of Management Review, the Journal of Operation Management, or Research Policy and worked with a variety of international firms and organizations such as Alcoa Inc., Accenture, McKinsey & Co., the Asian Development Bank, or The Mexican and Portuguese Science and Technology Foundations. Francisco has won several international awards, including the Stan Hardy award for the best paper published in the field of Operations Management in 2008 and the Alfred P. Sloan Industry Studies Fellowship for 2008-2010. Francisco has a PhD in Technology, Management and Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an M.S. in Technology Management from ISEG and a Diploma in Physics Engineering from IST, both part of the Technical University of Lisbon. For more information see www.veloso.net.

António worked in retail for 15 years following a distinguished academic career. Early in his retail career, António was CIO of Sonae, the largest retailer in Portugal, where he led the development of systems and processes identified by Forrester as one of the best in Europe for a food retailer. Sonae was the first major food retailer in the world to deploy the Oracle Retail merchandising system, and António pioneered much of the early content of Oracle Retail's food functionality. 
In 1997, he founded Enabler, a company dedicated to serving international retailers. António's strength is food retailing. He is interested in business and IS/IT architecture and the foundations for a scalable retailing engine. He considers innovation a key lever of productivity and competitiveness in today's market. 
In 2006, Wipro (the Indian IS integrator/outsourcer) acquired Enabler and António became VP of Retail Services for Wipro. 
During the last few years he has also invested (as a founding shareholder) in a number of other IT companies—Mobicomp, ITPeers, Profimetrics, and DHomeSphere. He is also a guest professor at EGP, the Porto Business School.

Paulo Glórias leads WIT Software’s Business Development and Marketing Unit. Paulo spent most of his career in Vodafone Portugal, and more than 2 years in the Vodafone Group. While at Vodafone Portugal, he launched the WAP service, the Mobile Connect Card, Blackberry, 3G and the Wireless LAN business.

Miguel Sales Dias is director of the Center for Research and Development of Microsoft Portugal. Miguel Sales Dias is, since November 2005, Director of the new Center for Research and Development of Microsoft Corporation in Portugal, and the coordinator of the first center of Microsoft's R & D, which works in the field of natural person-computer communication. Miguel Sales Dias is a professor in the Department of Information Technologies (DCTI) of the Institute Superior das Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa, ISCTE. President of ADETTI, Associação para o Desenvolvimento das Telecomunicações e Técnicas de Informática since 2000, Miguel Sales Dias is also, since 2004, Coordinator of the Unit of R & D Program of the National Program of the FCT. In addition, he performs the duties of Vice-President and Secretary of the Portuguese Group for Computer Graphics. Author and co-author of 80 publications, Miguel Sales Dias is a doctorate in Science and Information Technology at ISCTE in 1998 and, has a Masters Degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering, at IST-UTL, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa.

For something completely new, and after 10 years developing and managing new business technologies in Sonae Group and leading branding and communication strategies at McCann Erickson, Mário embarked on a journey to “make people love their waste” and founded OON Recycling Solutions.

Mário was born in Lisbon 34 years ago and has always searched for the new. He deeply tries to never walk the same path twice, which, sometimes, he does. After having studied software programming, arts and business management, he also went to Barcelona for an International MBA.

Convinced that we live in the most intense, exciting and dangerous age of all times, and with the deep conviction that social change must happen in a holistic and integrated way, Mário is passionate about how to balance the equation of sustainability and he is focused on creating new paths that will change the paradigm of how we manage our resources.

Carlos Pratas was born in 1963 and has a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Porto with Graduate in Industrial Management, and in Mphil Operations Management from the University of Bath UK. In addition he has a Ph. D. in Service Management from the University of Bath UK. Carlos Pratas gained a demanding and complex certification as Assessor EFQM (European Foundation for Quality Management), which endows all the knowledge and skills necessary to effectively lead an organization on its path to excellence