Artur Ribeiro, PhD

Was born in 1969, in Portugal, where he started his career as a writer and director. After graduating from Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema, he wrote and directed several short-films that earn him several prizes at film festivals, while working for several TV shows as a writer and director. In 1995 he went to Los Angeles, where he studied at the Stella Adler Acting Academy and attended several filmmaking workshops at UCLA and AFI. In Los Angeles he also co-directed several theatre plays. In 1997, Artur Ribeiro moved to New York City, where he worked as an editor and journalist for a Portuguese magazine and continued writing and directing shorts and theatre in the off-off Broadway circuit. In 1999, he wrote the screenplay for his first feature film Double Exile, which he also directed. This feature film that was shot in New York, New Jersey and the Azores Islands, opened in theaters in Portugal in 2000, also following the film festival circuit. Since then, Artur has been living between NY and Lisbon, writing scripts for feature projects, shooting short-films and working regularly as a writer-director for the Portuguese television. In the meantime, he finished his PhD in Literature, from Universidade do Algarve, with a thesis on the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald as a Hollywood screenwriter. The last few years he has been working mostly for Plural Entertainment Portugal, writing and directing TV movies and TV series, such as Belmonteand currently Santa Barbara. His TV show Belmonte was nominated in 2014 for Best Telenovela at the International Emmy Awards. 

Joana Maria, PhD

Is a materials scientist at the IBM TJ Watson Research Center. Her research in 3D Integration focuses on developing a new generation of high performance devices for mainframe and server computers. Another research area consists in device miniaturization with less power consumption and smaller footprint, applicable to the Internet of Things and wearable devices. Joana is currently leading a project to develop implantable and wearable devices to deliver drugs at either set times or in response to biosensor feedback.  These can be used to more effectively treat diabetes and other chronic diseases where patient compliance is critical. She is also working on novel micro-power sources and electronic packaging for clinical trials of wearable medical devices. These tiny power sources are 20 times smaller than current pacemaker batteries and generate energy density equivalent to alkaline batteries. Joana got her PhD in Materials Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her Licenciatura in Engineering Physics from Universidade Nova de Lisboa. She has published more than 20 papers and has 7 pending patents applications. Currently Joana became very interested in applying her technical, research and analytical skills to help solve healthcare and education challenges in developing countries. Joana is a member of the current PAPS Executive Committee of PAPS and is a mentor at the Brooklyn P-Tech school, the first school in the US to connect high school, college and the world of work through college and industry partnerships.

Nelson José dos Santos Ferreira

Is a Senior Software Engineer at Bloomberg Finance LP, where he develops software used in financial market data distribution both to Enterprise and Bloomberg Terminal customers. Prior to that, he was a Principal Software Engineer, Software Architect and Manager at EMC Corporation (via System Management ARTS), where he was a technical lead on products for the infrastructure management product suite and was awarded three patents. Prior to that, he worked as Senior Software Engineer at Altitute Software in Lisbon, and at Link Consulting where he was co-Practice Manager for Infrastructure Management and developed Portugal Telecom’s IT management diagnostics system, right after graduating Information System and Computer Science Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico (pre-Bologna). He also participates in several open source projects, most notably the SXEmacs and Emacs projects.