João Pedro Sousa was born in Sintra in 1965, and currently he is an assistant professor at the Information and Software Engineering Department of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

His research interests lie in the intersection of software engineering and artificial intelligence, and he is especially interested in building systems that address the challenges of ubiquitous computing in a principled way.

His research builds on ideas and techniques from software architecture, user modeling, decision theory, service ontology, human factors, mobile computing, self-adaptation, and distributed systems. And he validates his research by building systems, by constructing formal models of software and analytical models of cost-benefit for users, and by carrying out user studies.

João Pedro obtained his Licenciatura in Electrical and Computer Engineering in July 1988, at the Technical University of Lisbon, specifically at Instituto Superior Técnico, and in January 1994, he obtained his master degree in the area of Science in Applied Mathematics, at the same school.

After his graduation from IST, João Pedro spent ten years working on advanced projects for the financial industry in Portugal (BES and CGD).

In 1998 he joined Carnegie Mellon University for graduate studies, and obtained the following degrees. In May 2000, a Master of Software Engineering an three years later (May 2003), his third master, Master of Science in Computer Science. Later, in May 2005 he completed his PhD in Computer Science and finally, between May 2005 and August 2006, he held a post-doctoral fellowship.

For his studies at Carnegie Mellon, João Pedro was first sponsored by JNICT, later in part by FLAD, and after that, by a grant from CMU itself.

João Pedro Sousa has three journal papers as 1^st author, eight international conferences and workshops (three as 1^st author) and several technical reports.  He has served in the technical program committee of nine international conferences and workshops, and also carried out sporadic reviews for numerous other conferences and international journals.

João Pedro has done pioneer work at the intersection between software architecture and artificial intelligence, with applications to ubiquitous computing, which is the area for which he is best known.

He says, “In the future I would like to direct a lab working at the intersection of software architecture and artificial intelligence, and maybe start an international workshop in this area”. For example, he plans to tackle issues related to privacy and security that come as the flipside of ubiquitous access to computing and increased awareness of context such as the user's location.  “I'm also exited about the challenges of scaling personal computing beyond today's hotspots, such as offices or personal devices, into truly seamless and global availability”, he adds.

Some informal invitations to return to Portugal, but not formal ones, have been made to him, but João Pedro has decided to gain experience at a larger research environment in the US, before considering a return to Portugal.

AWARDS

August 1999 – July 2000 Awards Master of Software Engineering Fellow, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University

June 1999 – July 1999 FLAD Fellow, Portuguese-American Foundation for the Development

August 1998 – May 1999 Praxis XXI Fellow, Foundation for Science and Technology, Portuguese Ministry for Science and Technology

jpsousa at gmu.edu