CV Speakers
   
  Dr. José Mariano Gago, former Minister for Science and Technology Portugal.

Born in 1948, Prof. Gago trained in Paris at the Ecole Polytechnique as a High-Energy Physicist, he is Professor of Physics at Instituto Superior Tecnico in Lisboa, and has worked at CERN (European Nuclear Research Organisation) in Geneva for several years and is a member of the CERN Council (1985-1990). He was a member of the EC Joint Research Centre Board of Governors (1986-1989) and was President of the Portuguese National Board of Science and Technology (1986-1989).

Minister for Science and Technology of Portugal between 1995 and 2002, he represented Portugal at the Council of Ministers for R&D of the EU and he was in the chair of the European EUREKA initiative from July 1997 to 30th June 1998. He was also responsible for the coordination of the Portuguese policy on Information Society and for the promotion of science education and of scientific culture in general.

Prof. Gago was responsible for the preparation of the “Lisbon strategy” approved by the EU Summit in March 2000, in the areas of Science and Technology and Information Society policies.
Throughout his career, Prof. Gago has emphasized the link between teaching and research, and has examined issues such as whether there are possible divergences between teaching and research priorities. Prof. Gago is a founder of the Ciencia Viva program (since 1996), which aims to promote scientific and technological culture among the Portuguese population. ”My generation’s legacy will be that research and technology made great progress in being more accessible and understandable to the public. The present development of technical advancement would have been unthinkable if we were unable to relay on the basic technical knowledge of the average citizen,” states Prof. Gago.

Prof. Gago is President of the Portuguese Laboratory for Particle Physics and of the Instituto de Prospectiva (Institute for Forward Studies), in Portugal. He is the Chairman of the Board of the International Risk Governance Council (IRGC), Geneva. He is a member of the Academia Europaea.
     
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  Last updated: January 31, 2005