Speakers
Talk #1 AI & Robotics for Healthcare at IPN
Eng.D. and Coordinator of RTD unit at Instituto Pedro Nunes Automatics Lab. Holds a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering (specialisation in Automation and Robotics), João has 15+ years of experience acting as project manager and researcher in national and European R&D projects related to the development of Artificial Intelligent Agents and Robotics for Health and Active and Assisted Living. He has 70+ publications in scientific journals, conference proceedings and book chapters. He is involved in standardisation activities at the worldwide level, contributing to IEEE 1872.2 and IEEE 1872.3 (Secretary) Standards and being part of the policy advising groups at the European level as the IEEE EPPC for ICT. Additionally, he is acting as an independent expert for the European Commission, acting as an evaluator for the Horizon Europe framework programme. He is also a Research Associate at the Artificial Perception for Intelligent Systems and Robotics of the Institute of Systems and Robotics – University of Coimbra. His main areas of research interest are related to artificial social companions, intelligent environments, robotics, human-machine interaction, context recognition and human behaviour analysis.
Talk #2 Video-based Navigation for Arthroscopy and Orthopaedic Surgery
Michel Antunes holds a Ph.D. degree from the University of Coimbra. His research and professional work focus on 3D Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence applied to healthcare, with a particular emphasis on surgical navigation and medical imaging. He has authored more than 45 peer-reviewed publications and patents, and frequently serves as a reviewer for leading journals and conference. As R&D Manager at Smith&Nephew, Michel contributes to advancing the scientific and technological frontiers of surgical navigation in orthopaedics and sports medicine, fostering innovation that bridges research excellence and clinical translation.
Talk #3 Building the Future of AI Healthcare at Sword Health
Since graduating from DEEC, I’ve been dedicated to building things that matter. I started by co-developing the first Portuguese ID identification mechanism for vending machines, before moving on to Synopsys to focus on Linux Kernel development, where I’m proud to be an active Maintainer. Most recently, I joined Sword Health as a pivotal early team member (starting when there were only ~40 of us) to build the future of AI healthcare. Today, I lead multiple development teams in this intersection of hardware and software, focusing on fast pacing development and strategic execution.
