Pedro Arezes, Professor in the Department of Production and Systems and President of the School of Engineering between 2019 and 2025, took office on 3 December as Rector of the University of Minho for the next four years.

The ceremony took place in the medieval hall of the Rectory building in Braga and was broadcast online.

The rector’s team will include three members of the School of Engineering:

Lígia Rodrigues, Associate Professor with Aggregation in the Department of Biological Engineering, who served as Vice-President and President of the Pedagogical Council of the School of Engineering between 2022 and 2025, will be Pro-Rector for People, Planning and Quality.

Raúl Fangueiro, Full Professor in the Department of Textile Engineering, who served as Vice-President of the School of Engineering between 2022 and 2025, will be Pro-Rector for Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Knowledge Transfer.

And Tiago Miranda, Associate Professor with Aggregation in the Department of Civil Engineering, having been Executive Director of the Institute of Science and Innovation at the University of Minho (IB-S) between 2014-2020, and a member of the General Council of the University of Minho between 2022 and 2025, will be Vice-Rector for Sustainability and Physical Infrastructure.

Biographical note

Pedro Arezes was born in Barcelos in 1972 and has lived in Guimarães for over 30 years. He holds a degree in Production Engineering and a PhD in Production and Systems Engineering from UMinho, where he has pursued his academic career since 1995, as a full professor in the Department of Production and Systems at the School of Engineering and a researcher at the Algoritmi Centre. He was President of this School between 2019 and 2025 and National Director of the MIT Portugal Programme for almost a decade. He has coordinated more than 50 national and international research projects and published more than 150 scientific articles in the areas of ergonomics, human factors and safety.

He has taught and collaborated with several universities in Portugal and abroad, and has also participated in scientific evaluation bodies of various international agencies. He has held positions in national and regional advisory bodies, combining his academic career with institutional leadership. Pedro Arezes will be the 10th Rector in the 51-year history of UMinho, following Carlos Lloyd Braga, Joaquim Barbosa Romero, Lúcio Craveiro da Silva, João de Deus Pinheiro, Sérgio Machado dos Santos, Licínio Chainho Pereira, António Guimarães Rodrigues, António M. Cunha and Rui Vieira de Castro.

The University of Minho has 21,000 students (11% of whom are foreign) in more than 200 courses at its 12 Schools/Institutes in Braga and Guimarães. It has been a national leader in open science, patents and sustainability. It hosts the main Portuguese-speaking public supercomputer, the largest national university-industry project, and produces a tenth of the country’s science. It has around 500 R&D projects underway with almost 3,000 researchers and professors, 69 of whom are among the most cited in the world (World’s Top 2% Scientists). It has 11 cultural and differentiated units, around 1,500 events per year and academic and community projects in various locations, particularly in the CPLP.

The Action Programme for 2025-2029 can be downloaded here.

The UMinho School of Engineering wishes the new rectorial team every success in leading our academy!