Antonio Dias de Figueiredo

Antonio Dias de Figueiredo is a retired full professor of Information Systems at the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Coimbra, Portugal, where he develops his research interests in  Business Information Systems and ICT in Learning and Education, at the Center for Informatics and Systems of the University of Coimbra (CISUC). He also acts as an independent consultant.

He obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Manchester, U.K., in 1976. Between 1984 and 2007 he was professor of Informatics and Information Systems at the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Coimbra, where he created, in 1994, the Department of Informatics Engineering.

For a period of six years he represented Portugal in the Intergovernmental Informatics Program of UNESCO, Paris, where he was elected Vice-President for the Western Europe Region (1994/1996). At the invitation of the NATO Science Committee, Brussels, he integrated for a period of four years the NATO Special Program Panel on Advanced Educational Technology. He has participated in various European projects, both as a partner and as a science advisor, and acted on various occasions as a consultant to the European Commission in matters regarding the definition of strategies for information and communications technologies in education. He has collaborated with OECD on various occasions in initiatives regarding Information and Communication Technologies in Education. He was the Chairman of PROMETEUS (PROmoting Multimedia access to Education and Training in EUropean Society), a Memorandum of Understanding promoted by the European Commission, between March 2000 and March 2001. In 2004 he was the chair of the Context & Learning Special Interest Group of the European project Kaleidoscope.

He was awarded an Honoris Causa by Universidade Aberta, the Portuguese Open University, in 1997, and the Sigillum Magnum by the University of Bologna, Italy, in 2000. He has been awarded the title of Information Society Personality of the Year 2005 by APDSI, Oracle Portugal and Sun Portugal.

He is the author of over two hundred papers presented at national and international conferences. He has contributed with chapters to several books and has co-edited recently the book Managing Learning in Virtual Settings: the Role of Context, published by Information Science Publishing (2006). He authored recently "Action Research and Design in Information Systems:Two Faces of a Single Coin", chapter IV of the book Information Systems Action Research: An Applied View of Emerging Concepts and Methods, published by Springer (2007) and "The Sustainability of e-Collaboration", for The Encyclopedia of E-Collaboration, published by IGI Publishing (2008). He is the co-author of US Patent 7319998, "Method and System for Supporting Symbolic Serendipity". He is a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of e-Collaboration and of the Portuguese and Brazilian Management Journal.