Raul Vidal, professor at the Engineering College of the University of Porto (FEUP), will receive the Personality of the Year award in Software Engineering on the 29th of June, at 2:30 pm, in the auditorium of PT Inovação, in Aveiro. The ceremony takes place within the scope of the International Conference “Trends 2015: Quality in Software Development and Services”, organized by INOVA-Ria.
The stage chosen for the awarding ceremony of Professor Raul Vidal brings together a set of personalities with connections to the universe of new technologies and software quality, an area in which the Director of the Department of Informatics and Computers Engineering at FEUP has always valued. The attribution of the 2015 Personality of the Year award in Software Engineering to the professor at FEUP is due “to his commitment and leadership in this matter of great importance for the TICE sector and for the national economy as a whole”.
With a degree in Electrical Engineering from FEUP in 1972, Raul Vidal continued his studies in England, completing his Master’s in 1974 and later his PhD, both at UMIST in Manchester in 1978. His professional interests have always been linked to the area of software quality, improvement of software processes, human factors in software engineering and entrepreneurship and innovation.
Member of the FEUP Software Engineering R&D Group, which he founded and led until 2008, Raul Vidal has participated in several national and international R&D projects. Co-founder in 2009 of Strongstep, spin-off of the Engineering College, in the area of process improvement and software quality. Between 1986 and 1998, he developed R&D activities at INESC TEC, being responsible for SIRTE projects and Telephone Central Supervision Networks, having even founded in 1990 the Software Engineering group, which he led and where he was involved in several R&D projects.
From May 1992 to December 1995, on behalf of the Rectory of the University of Porto, he coordinated the participation of R&D institutions in the Northern Region of Portugal, within the scope of a RECITE project, involving the regions of Bavaria, Northern Portugal, Seville and Valencia. From May 1988 to December 1992, he was an effective national delegate in the European community’s DELTA program. At the express invitation of CCE, he joined the “Requirements Board” of the program, having also integrated the group of experts who carried out its reevaluation and the panel of evaluators who carried out the final evaluation of the projects approved in the respective exploratory phase.
Raul Vidal was one of the main facilitators and coordinators of the process of creating the Master’s Degree in Electrotechnical Engineering and Computers at FEUP in 1986. He was the facilitator and coordinator of the process of reformulating the study plan for the Degree in Electrotechnical Engineering at FEUP in 1987, the same happened with the creation process of FEUP’s LEIC in 1992/1993. He was also coordinator of the edition of MEEC held in 1990/1991 at the University of Madeira and one of the main facilitators of the process of creating the Degree in Systems and Computer Engineering at the University of Madeira, in 1994, of which he was pedagogical coordinator until 1998.
He is currently Director of the Computer Engineering Department at FEUP and Associate Professor, integrated in the disciplinary and R&D area of Software Engineering. Elected member of the General Council of the University of Porto in July 2013 and member of the Scientific Council of FEUP, since July 2014. Since February 2015, he has integrated, as Senior Advisor, the Service for Support to Business Partnerships (SAPE) of INESC TEC .
He is a senior member of the IEEE, a member of the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie-Mellon University, and a senior member of the Order of Engineers (Computer Engineering School).