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The University of Coimbra is well known for its excellence in higher education and research in Portugal, due to the quality of the courses taught at its eight faculties and to the advances achieved in pure and applied research. The University of Coimbra offers to its around 20,000 students, a wide and comprehensive group of graduate and postgraduate courses, master's degrees, and doctorate programmes, as well as life-long training programmes, with a teaching staff of about 1,200. Eight faculties and an Institute for Interdisciplinary Research constitute the organic units of the university and the head offices for the generation of knowledge.

A less well-known aspect of the university’s activities is the transfer of knowledge and the support provided to entrepreneurship and to the development of businesses and industry. The university has even set up a unit aimed at the integration of knowledge which will be at the service of the community. Based on its R&D capabilities, the University of Coimbra has been developing projects for the creation of added value with over one thousand Portuguese and multinational bodies.

UC Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Sciences and Technology, is well known in Portugal and abroad for the excellence of teaching and for excellent R&D records. Our department is ranked among the best 3 departments in Portugal, in terms of quality of teaching, and its Mechanical Engineering Research Centre (CEMUC) was classified as ‘excellent’ in the last 3 international evaluations of the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (our budget is largely dependent on the evaluation, which is carried out based on international standards). We have been involved in more than five European Integrated Projects, with SMErobots being still ongoing. Currently our department is offering several graduation and post-graduation courses in Mechanical Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Energy systems and Surface Engineering and Materials.

J. Norberto Pires was born in the “mui nobre” city of Guimarães (Portugal). He finished high-school in Guimarães and traveled to Coimbra to graduate in Engineering Physics in 1991 from the University of Coimbra (Physics Department). He received a M.Sc. degree in 1994 in Technological Physics (Physics Department), and a Ph.D. in 1999 in Robotics and Automation (Mechanical Engineering Department), both from the University of Coimbra . Since 1991 he has been with the Mechanical Engineering staff of the University of Coimbra, where currently he serves as Auxiliary Professor. His research interests include force control, industrial robotics, object-oriented and distributed programming applied to industrial robotics, flexible manufacturing systems, and human-machine interfaces. Dr. Pires is currently editor-in-chief of the journal "Robótica,” the only Portuguese Journal on Robotics and Automation, author of 3 books in the robotics and automation areas (1 in Portuguese edited by LIDEL, with 4 editions, and 3 in English edited by Springer), and more than 150 scientific/technical publications. He has organized several workshops and seminars on Robotics and Automation. He is an IEEE SENIOR member (robotics and automation and industrial electronics societies), served as vice-president and president of the IEEE-PT branch, member of SPF (Portuguese Physics Society) where he coordinates the "Applied Physics and Engineering Division”, APCA (Portuguese Association of Automatic Control) where he serves as president of the Management Board, and of SPR (Portuguese Robotics Society). J. Norberto Pires coordinated more than 10 national projects financed by FCT (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) and other scientific organizations. He was part of the FP6 project SMErobot^TM which is considered one of the most successful EU funded R&D projects. Moreover, Dr. Pires was involved in more than 40 projects financed by industry, which resulted in several robotic systems specially designed for industry. Finally, Dr. Pires is author of more than 500 science dissemination articles in journals, magazines and newspapers. He currently holds 5 weekly columns in national newspapers and magazines, one weekly radio show about science and technology and an “Industrial Robotics” collection at the University of Coimbra iTunesU channel.

Personal website: http://robotics.dem.uc.pt/norberto

iTunesU “industrial Robotics Collection”: http://itunes.apple.com/itunes-u/id413183592