Bráulio Alexandre Barreira Alturas was born in Lisbon in 1964, but has always lived in Queluz, has a PhD in Business Management with a specialization in Marketing (2005), a Master's Degree in Business Sciences with specialization in Management Information Systems (1995) and Degree in Business Organisation and Management(1989), by ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa. He is currently Associate Professor at the ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa Information Science and Technology Department, and researcher at ISTAR-Iscte (Information Sciences, Technologies and Architecture Research Center). Coordinator of several curricular units of Informatics Applied to Management and Social Sciences and professor in Masters and Postgraduates, as well as a trainer in the area of Organizational Information Systems.

Francisco Cercas has more than 40 years of professional experience including teaching at High School and Industry as Research Engineer (CENTREL EID 1982-1983) before entering the academic career in 1984. He lectured at IST (Instituto Superior Técnico – Lisbon) for 15 years, then at ISCTE-IUL, where he is Full Professor since 2012. He is or was researcher at CAPS, INESC, Satellite Centre of the University of Plymouth (UK) and Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT), where he leads of the Radio Group IT-IUL. He is co-author of a new class of codes named TCH (Tomlinson, Cercas, Hughes) and more than 200 publications including one patent, 5 book chapters, 30 international journal papers, more than 150 conference papers and several international research reports. He supervised and co-supervised 8 PhD completed theses, as well as many MsCs and Final Year's Projects at both IST and ISCTE-IUL. He participated in several national and international projects and he was National Delegate of four COST European projects. He was President of the University’s Scientific Council (ISCTE-IUL 2015-2018), School Dean (ISTA 2010-2013) and President of his Department (DCTI 2007-2010). He is Senior Member of IEEE and the national Coordinator of Telecommunications at Ordem dos Engenheiros between 2014 and 2022. His research interests include satellite and mobile communications, coding theory, spread spectrum communications and related topics.