In 1980 he completed the degree in Electrical Engineering of the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of the University of Coimbra (FCTUC) with the final classification of 18 in 20. In 1988, he obtained a Doctorate degree from the University of Coimbra in Engineering Sciences, specialized in Informatics, and was unanimously approved with Distinction and Honours. He started his research activity in 1979, within the scope of a research project financed by the Portuguese National Board for Scientific and Technological Research (JNICT). Since then he has been involved in research projects up to 2008 (he became Dean of FCTUC at that time), financed, among others, by JNICT, FCT, European Union, Innovation Agency, European Space Agency and NASA, as well as by several companies, including Portucel, RIMA and Siemens. He was one of the founders of the Research Center for Information Technology and Systems of the University of Coimbra - CISUC, created in 1991, having been its president from 2002 to 2006. He led the Research Group on Reliable Systems from 1991 to 2005, and this group received the classification of Excellent on all external evaluations. He is the author of 130 scientific publications subject to peer review, which have been cited more than 3000 times by other international researchers. He was Chairman of the Scientific Committee of the most important scientific conference of his research area, IEEE International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks, in the June 2003 edition in San Francisco. He coordinated the design of the first Portuguese computer, designed and produced industrially in Portugal, the ENER 1000. This project, which ran from 1980 to 1985, was considered by the Order of Engineers one of the milestones of 20th century Portuguese engineering. He continued to participate in several industrial projects, such as the one that developed a portable electronic typewriter for the Portuguese company MESSA between 1983 and 1987, or the development project of the modular computer UNIC, an evolution of the ENER 1000, for the company RIMA. Later, he coordinated several projects within the scope of the Computer and Systems Laboratory of IPN, among which the development of several control systems for Soporcel's first paper mill and the WinFT (Windows Fault Tolerance) project developed software that came to be acquired in 1998 by the Canadian company Intrinsyc, as well as the Xception Fault In jector, that was sold to the Nasa's Jet Propulsiion Laboratory, and other Space Agencies . He also coordinated the development of other software packages that gained international visibility, such as WPVM, the first worldwide adaptation to the Windows operating system of the then standard PVM for parallel programming, and the WMPI, an adaptation of another parallel programming standard to the system Windows operating system, which was also the first worldwide, and was a commercial product of Critical Software.

He was the CEO of the software company Heron, that existed during a short period in the 1980s, and was one of the founders of Critical Software SA.

At the international level, he played a central role in the participation of FCTUC in Portugal's cooperation programs with Carnegie Mellon University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also participated in several meetings of the Coimbra Group, and other ad hoc missions, in particular with the European Commission

He has served in the Senate since 2001 and was elected to the Assembly of the University from 1998 until its extinction in 2008. He was a member of the Statutory Assembly in 2007/2008 and of the General Council (2008 and 2009).He was elected Director of FCTUC in 2009 - a position he held until 2011 - after being elected Chairman of the Governing Board and Scientific Council in 2006 and re-elected in 2008. 

He was Rector of the University of Coimbra from March 2011 to February 2019.

He currently leads the Instituto Pedro Nunes.