João Leão is currently professor and vice-rector of the Instituto Universitário de Lisboa. His research interests include regulation, public finance and macroeconomic policy. João Leão holds a Ph.D in Economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a M.Sc. and a B.sc. in Economics from Nova School of Business and Economics.  He has published articles on regulation and competition and on the Portuguese and European economy, including in top journals such as the Journal of The European Economic Association. He served as Minister of State for Finance of Portugal during 2020-2022. He was a Secretary of the State for the Budget from 2015 to 2020. From 2010 to 2014 he was the director-general of the Office for Economic Studies at the Portuguese Ministry of Economy. Prior to this, he was a professor of Economics at Instituto Universitário de Lisboa and at Nova School of Business and Economics. As part of his duties as Minister of Finance, he represented Portugal as Governor of the European Stability Mechanism, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the European Investment Bank, the African Development Bank Group, the Asian Development Bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank Group and the World Bank Group. He was also President of the ECOFIN Council during the Portuguese Presidency of the European Council in the first semester of 2021 and the Chair of the Board of Governors of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development from 2021 to 2022

Mónica Meireles is Assistant Professor at ISCTE-University Institute of Lisbon and Researcher at BRU-IUL (Business Research Unit). She is director of the Master degree in Business Economics and Competition. She was director of the Undergraduate degree in Economics at Iscte (2018-2020) and vice-director of the Department of Economics at Iscte (2014-2010). Her main research interests are in energy and environmental economics, where she has focused on renewable energies, environmental policies, sustainable development and growth models with technological change. She has been a consultant for the Portuguese Environmental Ministry and the European Commission and she has also supported the Ministry of the Environment with Environmental Economics training. She is a member and founding partner of the Portuguese Association for Energy Economics (APEEN), affiliate of the International Association for Energy Economics (IAEE), in whose conferences she participates regularly, and currently belongs to the Fiscal Council of APEEN. Among others, she is also a member of the Iberian Association of Natural and Environmental Resource Economics (AERNA) and she was a Board member of the European Association of Young Economists (EAYE) (2016-2018). She teaches in different areas, with particular emphasis on the Economics of Environment and Natural Resources, Energy and Environmental Economics and Microeconomics at different academic levels.

Nadia Simoes holds a PhD in Economics and a Master degree in Economics from ISEG (Universidade de Lisboa). Started to teach in the Economics Department of ISCTE - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa in 2002. Director of the Bachelor Degree in Economics (Iscte - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa). Former Director of the Master in Business Economics and Competition for nine editions of the programme. Researcher of the Economics Group of the Business Research Unit (BRU-IUL). She has published paper articles in several journals such as Economics Letters, Journal of Economic Surveys, Empirical Economics, Acta Oeconomica, International Review of Applied Economics, Telecommunications Policy, Panoeconomicus, International Journal of Social Economics, Economics Bulletin, among others. Associate Editor of the journal International Journal of Education Economics and Development (SCOPUS Q4) and Editor of the journal Cogent Economics & Finance (SCOPUS Q3). Member of the Editorial Board of the following journals: Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues (SCOPUS Q1); Journal of Entrepreneurship Education (SCOPUS Q2); Panoeconomicus (SCOPUS Q2); Journal of Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies (SCOPUS Q2); Academy of Entrepreneurship Journal (SCOPUS Q3); the International Journal of Entrepreneurship (SCOPUS Q3); and Revista Galega de Economia (SCOPUS Q4). NEP Editor for the area of Education (nep-edu). Member of the Editorial Board of the European Training Foundation (European Union). She has participated in several research national and international research projects financed by public institutions (including two projects funded by FCT and a project funded by the Ministry of Employment).  Expert for different national and international institutions such as the EUROPEAN EMPLOYMENT OBSERVATORY (EUROPEAN COMMISSION), INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANIZATION , CEDEFOP, EUROFOUND, EUROPEAN CENTRE OF EXPERTISE, PORTUGUESE LABOUR MINISTRY, and PORTUGUESE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION.

Sandro Mendonça is Professor at the Department of Economics, ISCTE – Lisbon University Institute. He is also Invited Professor at ISEG - University of Lisbon and Visiting Professor at the Dept. of Economics of the University of Insubria, Italy. He is a German Marshall Fund Fellow since 2012. He was a visiting scholar of King’s College, London, in the Fall of 2012. In 2015 he was nominated “European Young Leader” by the Friends of Europe Foundation. He is faculty of SPRU, the University of Sussex, since 2016. Since 2012 he teaches and supervises at the doctoral programs of the Southern Medical University (Guanghzou) and the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (Chengdu). He served as Director of the Economics undergraduate programme at ISCTE Business School (AACSB acredited) during two terms. He was Scientific Manager of “Science and Society” at CYTED (the Ibero-American program for science and technology, www.cyted.org) from 2014 to 2018, and remained an advisor to the Secretary General. He cooperated with CEN (European Committee for Standardization) and EUIPO (European Union Intellectual Property Rights Office). He was deputy member of the Management Committee of OceanGov (European Network on “Ocean Governance for Sustainability”, sponsored by the European Science Foundation).  His research and consultancy work mostly focus on innovation and industrial policy. He is also active in the fields of strategic foresight and conflict research. His research is cited in a number of scientific papers as well as academic textbooks, professional handbooks and official reports by international organisations, including the European Commission, the OCDE, several UN agencies and programmes (such as WIPO, UNIDO, IPCC), etc. He holds editorial positions in the following academic journals: Foresight and STI Governance, Frontiers in Sustainability, Public Policy Portuguese Journal, and OBS*. He has consulted extensively and internationally, both with the public sector and the industrial sector, as well as the “third sector”, both in his country and abroad.  He has maintained a civic activity for a long time, most visibly in the media. In the past he held opinion columns in magazines like Revista Macau (the Macau-based magazine on Oriental and Portuguese-speaking affairs) and UP (the on-board magazine of TAP, the Portuguese heritage carrier). In terms of newspapers, he held columns in a number of newspapers: Público (Portugal’s reference daily newspaper), Diário de Notícias (the oldest mainstream daily paper) and Diário Económico (a leading Portuguese business newspaper, which survives today as Jornal Económico). He has appeared frequently as commentator at RTP3, SIC-N and TVI-24, cable news networks. At the time of his nomination for ANACOM he held a weekly column in Expresso (Portugal’s leading weekly newspaper). On X-twitter he is @sfm_reg and can also be found on Linkedin.  Sandro Mendonça is member of the advisory board of the monitoring unit of the Portuguese official national authority for cybesecurity (CNCS). He is a member of the governing body of Ceadi, the intelligence council of the Brasilian telecomunications regulator (Anatel). He is an analyst with the mexican-based DPL News, a media and research agency focusing on digital & telecoms in Latin America. He is a columnist at Macau Business magazine and at Jornal Económico. Between 2018 and 2023 he was Executive Board Member of ANACOM, the Portuguese communications regulator.