Previous Fora / 2003

Speakers

Professor Mariano Gago

Minister for Science
Portugal

(based on web page of Ministerial Conference on Electronic Commerce in Ottawa)

 

Born in 1948, Prof. Gago trained in Paris at the Icole Polytechnique as a High-Energy Physicist. He is currently Professor of Physics at Instituto Superior Tecnico in Lisboa, and has worked at CERN (European Nuclear Research Organisation) in Genitve for several years. He has been a member of the CERN Council (1985-1990), the EC Joint Research Centre Board of Governors (1986-1989), President of the Portuguese National Board for Science and Technology (1986-1989), and was chair of the European EUREKA initiative from July 1997 to June 1998. Prof. Gago has been the Minister for Science and Technology of Portugal since 1995, and represents Portugal at the Council of Ministers for Research and Development of the EU. He is also responsible for the coordination of the Portuguese policy on Information Society, and for the promotion of science education and scientific culture.

Throughout his career, Prof. Gago has emphasised the link between teaching and research, and has examined issues such as whether universities should specialise more in teaching or in research and whether there are possible divergences between teaching and research priorities. Prof. Gago is a founder of the Cięncia Viva programme (since 1996), which on behalf of the Ministry of Science and Technology, ams to promote scientific and technological culture among the Portuguese population. "My generation's legacy will be that research and technology made great progress in being more accessible and understandable to the public. The present development of technical advancement would have been unthinkable if we were unable to rely on the basic technical knowledge of the average citizen," states Prof. Gago.

He has also fostered research that is increasingly carried out in a framework of international cooperation, as a chance for Portugal to develop new products and provide new types of knowledge-intensive services.

 

Resources on the Web

The Portuguese Ministry of Science and Technology:
http://www.ucv.mct.pt