The members of the Ethics Council and the Institutional Ombudsman of the University of Minho, João Álvaro Carvalho, took office this Friday, March 3, in Largo do Paço, Braga. The session was attended by the members of the General Council of UMinho, chaired by Joana Marques Vidal, and the rector, Rui Vieira de Castro.
The Ethics Council (CEUMinho) is chaired by professor emeritus Cecília Leão, and also includes professors Manuel Gama, Manuel Pinto, Pedro Albuquerque and Célia Pais, students Luciana Meneses and Manuel Protásio, senior technician Isabel Monteiro, as well as four external personalities – Jorge Soares (University of Lisbon), Lucília Nunes (Polytechnic Institute of Setúbal), José Manuel Mendes (Portuguese Writers Association) and Helena Freitas (University of Coimbra).
This consultative body of the Rector and the General Council of the University supports policies and actions to safeguard the ethical and deontological principles in research, teaching, interaction with society and in the general operation of the academy. Cecília Leão holds a PhD in Biology/Microbiology from UMinho, in which she was vice-rector, president of the School of Sciences and the School of Medicine (which she co-founded), director of the Research Institute in Life and Health Sciences and vice-president of the Ethics Council, among other functions. She is (co)author of more than one hundred scientific publications, holder of the Alumni Chair of Medicine – Prof. Pinto Machado, member of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences and recipient of the Medal of Scientific Merit from the Portuguese Government.
The Institutional Ombudsman, João Álvaro Carvalho, was born in Braga in 1960 and has a PhD in Information Systems from the Institute of Science and Technology of the University of Manchester (United Kingdom). He is Full Professor of the Department of Information Systems of the School of Engineering of UMinho, where he teaches since 1983 and was interim president and vice-president, as well as president of its first School Council. He cofounded the Portuguese Association for Information Systems (APSI), was consultant of the Government entity that manages information technologies (GPTIC), has coordinated commissions of the Assessment and Accreditation Agency for Higher Education (A3ES) and collaborates with the United Nations University (UNU-EGOV), among other activities. The Institutional Ombudsman’s role is to promote the rights of the University’s staff and, since its creation in 2018, has had Professor Emeritus Aníbal Alves in office.
