Manuel Heitor is a Visiting Professor at NYU, with affiliations in the Center for Urban Science + Progress (CUSP) and the Marron Institute. In addition, he is a professor at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) the engineering school at the University of Lisbon. He served as Minister for Science, Technology and Higher Education for the Government of Portugal in the periodNovember 2015-March 2022 and as the Secretary of State for Science, Technology and Higher Education from March 2005 to June 2011. Overall, he served more than 12 years in the Government of Portugal and, among many other initiatives, he  promoted the program Go-Portugal – Global Science and Technology Partnerships Portugal and theAtlantic International Research Centre – AIR centre. He helped to develop the Portuguese and European Space strategies, as well enforce research and innovation policies, including Advanced Computing for Europe.

He founded and directed the IST´s Center for Innovation, Technology and Policy Research which was named as one of the Top 50 Global Centers of Research on Management of Technology by the International Association for the Management of Technology (IAMOT) in 2005. He coordinated the IST´s doctoral programs in engineering and public policy (EPP) and engineering design and advanced manufacturing”. In 2011-12, he was a visiting scholar at Harvard University. In 2022 he was awarded with an honorary Doctor of Science and Technology from Carnegie Mellon University, USA, and was nominated Distinguished Institute Professor at IST, University of Lisbon.

In 1985, he earned a Ph.D. at Imperial College in London in combustion research and did post-doctoral training at the University of California, San Diego. He then began an academic career at IST where he pursued research and teaching in the areas of energy and the environment. Heitor served as the deputy-president of IST from 1993-1998 and has been involved in several initiatives on the study of science, technology and innovation policies, including higher education policies and management. Since 1995, he has been a research fellow at the University of Texas at Austin’s IC2 Institute. He was a founding member of the S&T Council of the International Risk Governance Council, IRGC and of Globelics: the Global Network for the Economics of Learning, Innovation, and Competence-building Systems.

Manuel Heitor has published over 130 scientific articles and supervised over 40 post-grad students. He is co-author of, among others, New Ideas for the University (in Portuguese, IST Press, 1998) and Innovation for All? (Praeger, 2005). He was co-editor of the book series on Technology Policy and Innovation, launched by Greenwood Publishing Group and continued by Purdue University Press.