Luís Diogo, PhD
Is an Assistant Professor in the Mathematics Department at Columbia University, where he teaches and does research in Symplectic Topology. This is a recent branch of Geometry that has its roots in Classical Mechanics and has deep and unexpected relations to many other areas of Mathematics and Physics. Before coming to New York City, he was a Postdoctoral fellow at ETH Zurich. Prior to that, he obtained his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Stanford University and a M.Sc. in Mathematics from the University of Chicago. He obtained his undergraduate degree in Mathematics at Instituto Superior Técnico, after a failed attempt at learning Physics.
Nuno Marques, M.A., is an award winning Portuguese pianist currently based in New York City where he is developing his career and pursuing his doctoral degree at Rutgers University with Prof. Min Kwon. Nuno graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, where he studied with Artur Pizarro, also completing his Master’s Degree in Advanced Piano Performance at the Royal College of Music, London, with Niel Immelman. He also completed the Advanced Diploma in piano at NYU- Steinhardt School with Prof. José Ramón Méndez, where he was awarded the prestigious Reinhold Scholarship. His studies have been sponsored by the European Union, Reinhold Foundation, Fundação Gulbenkian and AAMSL- Portugal.
Having performed extensively throughout Europe and North America as a soloist and chamber musician, Nuno Marques worked with some of the most renowned pianists, such as Irina Zaritzkaya, Vitaly Margoulis, Alexander Kobrin and Lazar Berman; and chamber music with Beaux Arts Piano Trio, Takaks Quartet, Gary Hoffman, or Ilia Grubert.
Passionate about contemporary music, he has commissioned and premiered new works for solo piano and ensembles.
He had the opportunity to perform in important venues and festivals such as St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London; Casa da Musica, Porto; Quincena Musical Donostiarra; Transeuropeennes Festival-France; Musikaste-San Sebastian. He has also performed solo with the Artave Symphony Orchestra and the Orquestra do Norte, Portugal, and frequently recorded live concerts for Antena2, Portugal, and Centro Atlantico.
He has recently been to China, where he performed a concert tour; played a recital and taught a masterclass at the World Piano Congress in Serbia, and had his debut at Carnegie Hall.
Paula Abreu, PhD
Is a Director of Statistics at Pfizer Pharmaceutical. Paula obtained her PhD in Biostatistics at Columbia University. She worked at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital and Mount Sinai Hospital during her postdoctoral research years before making a career change to the corporate world. Her thesis was on Genetics and Mathematical modeling to mapping of genes. During her almost 16 years in the Pharmaceutical world, Paula has worked in Phase 3b/4 research in several areas, such as Oncology, CNS and Cardiovascular in the design, analyses and reporting of clinical studies and submissions to FDA and international regulatory agencies. In her free time, Paula enjoys spending time with her children, read, cinema and travel.
Rui PG Pereira, MSc
Was born and raised in the mountain side of Portugal and since an early age he likes to take things apart in order to build new toys.
Rui graduated in Multimedia design and New Media from Universidade de Aveiro, has a specialization in Human-Computer Interaction from Universidade Tecnica de Lisboa and later on went to pursue a Masters at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU – Tisch School of the Arts.
Passionate about music and visuals interaction with sounds and emotions. He has been performing live visuals since the end of the last century and has devoted much of his experiments and work to these areas and to the exploration of emotional connections through expressive interfaces. His performances, prints and interactive experiences have been shown internationally and he is honored to have had his studies and art supported by the Fundaçao Calouste Gulbenkian and INOV-ART Program.
Rui has worked as a interactive technology researcher/creative from as different settings as research centers and theaters and interaction designer and as consultant for IDEO, providing interaction design consulting for major clients in the areas of finance and entertainment, as well as a researcher exploring novel interfaces for IDEO Labs.
Recently Rui has been collaborating with Brands, ideating and researching creative usages of technologies to improve products and create unique digital campaigns, leading the research at HAVAS innovation Lab and lately as Creative Technologist at Google’s The ZOO a creative think tank for brands and agencies.
Rui is also an educator, teaching workshops on interface design for live visuals performance and mobile audiovisual tools and he has also been a visiting scholar at the Design and Technology MFA Program at Parsons The New School for Design in New York teaching audio visual interactive systems.
In his free time Rui loves to play with his kid and likes to apply his experimentation skills while cooking.