PhD and Habilitation in Informatics Engineering, Full Professor at the University of Coimbra, where he teaches Artificial Intelligence, Computational Creativity, Programming for Design, Sound Design and other topics. He is a founder member of the Centre for Informatics and Systems of the University of Coimbra (CISUC) and was President of the Centre from 2008 to 2012. He was the Academic Ombudsman of the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of the University of Coimbra from 2016 to 2022 and Vice-President of Instituto Pedro Nunes, the knowledge transfer and incubation interface of the University of Coimbra, from 2017 to 2023.

He developed pioneering work on Computational Creativity in the ’90s, ever since assuming an active role in the establishment of a Computational Creativity community, namely by founding the International Conference on Computational Creativity (ICCC) [2010-present], and by co-founding The Association for Computational Creativity in 2017. He was General Chair of the 2016 and 2020 editions of ICCC 2016, respectively in Paris, France, and Coimbra, Portugal (online). He was co-chair of the 2023 and 2024 editions of the IJCAI Special Track on AI, Arts & Creativity, held respectively in Macau and Jeju, South Corea. In the Association for Computational Creativity, served as Treasurer (2015-2022) and serves as Chair of the Supervisory Board since 2023. He was co-editor of the book “Computational Creativity – The Philosophy and Engineering of Autonomously Creative Systems”, published by Springer in 2019.

He is currently involved in the PRR-funded project NextGenAI – Centre For Responsible AI, a nationwide partnership with companies and Universities, and in the project EA-Digifolk, a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action. He was involved in the FET Coordination Action ProSECCo – Promoting the Scientific Exploration of Computational Creativity (2013-2016) – and in the FP7-ICT STREPS project ConCreTe – Concept Creation Technology (2013-2016).

His research interests also extend to affective computing, sound and music computing, sonification and interactive music.