Biography
Clara Gonçalves is a believer in innovation and technology, with great expertise in global knowledge networks, involving academic communities, companies and startups.
Clara Gonçalves has a degree in Agricultural Engineering from the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto, with a specialisation in Innovation, Knowledge and Entrepreneurship from the Department of Economics, Management and Industrial Engineering of the University of Aveiro, and has started an Executive MBA at Erasmus University - Rotterdam School of Management, which has been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
She is the co-founder of a Scientific Machine Learning startup, Inductiva Research Labs, in which she holds the position of Head of Strategy and Partnerships. In recent years, Clara has worked as Finance and Foresight Group Leader at the Fraunhofer Institute in Portugal, the Head of Innovation and Technology Transfer at the Health Innovation Center of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Minho, and the Executive Director of UPTEC – Science and Technology Park at the University of Porto, implementing an effective model of knowledge and technology transfer between academia and companies, supporting more than 500 technology-based start-ups and spin-offs and attracting around 30 Innovation Centers from national and international companies to the ecosystem of the University of Porto.
Clara is also a member of the Steering Committee and organiser of the “Future of Computing” Summer School, Vice President of ENSICO – Association for the Teaching of Computing and a member of the Advisory Board of Firefly Innovations, a Public Health Entrepreneurship Platform managed by the City University in New York and the IE Business School in Madrid.
She is also a member and alumnus of the US Department of State, being part of an international cohort of future leaders in the diplomacy program - International Visitor Leadership Program.
In 2018 Clara was awarded the “2018 Champion of the Year” by the Business and Innovation Network (BIN), a knowledge network between the University of Porto, the University of São Paulo and the University of Sheffield.