João Barros is an Associate Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the School of Engineering of the University of Porto and the coordinator of the Porto Laboratory of the Instituto de Telecomunicações . He is also a Research Affiliate with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In February 2009, Dr. Barros was appointed National Director of the CMU-Portugal Program , a five-year international partnership between Carnegie Mellon University and 12 Portuguese Universities and Research Institutions, with a total budget of 56M Euros. He received his undergraduate education in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Universidade do Porto (UP), Portugal and Universitaet Karlsruhe , Germany, until 1999, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology from the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) , Germany, in 2004. From 2005 to 2008, João Barros was an assistant professor at the Department of Computer Science of the School of Sciences of the University of Porto . The focus of his research lies in the general areas of information theory, communication networks and data security. Dr. Barros received a Best Teaching Award from the Bavarian State Ministry of Sciences, Research and the Arts, as well as scholarships from several institutions, including the Fulbright Commission and the Luso-American Foundation . He held visiting positions at Cornell University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , where he spent a sabbatical in 2008. Beyond his duties as Secretary of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Information Theory Society, his service included co-chairing the 2008 IEEE Information Theory Workshop in Porto, Portugal, and participating in several Technical Program Committees, including ITW 2009, WiOpt (2008 and 2009), ISIT 2007, IS 2007, and IEEE Globecom (2007 and 2008).