During his first 20 years at the Academia, António Cruz Serra says he never imagined himself ‘in management positions’. However, it was also in these roles that the professor and researcher at Instituto Superior Técnico in electrical engineering would excel over the next 25 years. Nor did he anticipate that, on 12 February 2025, the Pavilhão de Portugal would be too small for all those who wanted to attend the ceremony to confer the title of emeritus professor to the first Rector of the new Universidade de Lisboa – ULisboa (2013-2021). Even though as a student at the Faculty of Engineering of University of Porto (FEUP), he had ‘shown a natural ability for university management’, as José Marques dos Santos recalled. His former professor of Electronic Instrumentation, who also led the University of Porto between 2006 and 2014, recalled the ‘student Cruz Serra working at an instrumentation bench’ and ‘an excellent student who was very active and involved […] as in the 76/77 academic year he was a member of the board of directors’. Although he ‘stood out as a researcher in the field of electrical engineering’, his impact ‘went far beyond the classroom and laboratories’ as ‘he took on responsibilities that shaped the perspective of higher education in Portugal’, said Luís Ferreira, the current Rector of ULisboa and a member of Cruz Serra’s rectoral team. He highlighted his ‘very high firmness, perceived by many as obstinacy, sometimes stubbornness’. However, he said that António Cruz Serra ‘never stopped listening and discussing with others before making a decision’. Decisions based on ‘enormous rationality’ without forgetting ‘human factors’ or ignoring the law: ‘How many times have we heard him say: “We should always obey the law”, in a ‘perfect synthesis between tradition and modernity, between academic rigour and human sensitivity’. He represented ULisboa’s motto “from Lisbon to the world”perfectly.
The ceremony to confer the title of emeritus professor to the Full Professor of Electrical Engineering at Técnico’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (1978-2022) takes place at Pavilhão de Portugal, a space of ULisboa thanks to his efforts: he managed to ‘convince the government to give the Pavilhão de Portugal to Universidade de Lisboa’, says Rogério Colaço, the president of Instituto Superior Técnico. In a ‘deep commitment to the public cause’, the last Rector of the Universidade Técnica de Lisboa (2012-2013) had to ‘be patient and able to captivate everyone for his project, sometimes not very patient but in general patient’, described Leonor Beleza, president of the General Council of Universidade de Lisboa between 2013 and 2021, referring to the merger between the Universidade Técnica de Lisboa and Universidade de Lisboa. Still on the subject, she shared that ‘António Cruz Serra was instrumental in uniting the ULisboa schools, fostering a sense of cohesion without any concern for dominance that wasn’t based on scientific and academic merit.”
A “convinced ‘flaviense'” who “was actually born in Coimbra”, as Pedro Girão, a professor at Técnico and his colleague for 45 years, described it. On a journey back in time, the honouree mentioned the João de Deus Kindergarten in Chaves, ‘at a time when only 8% of children attended pre-school [today it has risen to 94%]’ and General Humberto Delgado’s rally, which he attended ‘on his father’s shoulders’ in 1958. ‘I studied in a public primary school with more than 100 pupils from first to fourth grade, only four of us wore shoes. None of my 30 or 40 classmates continued their studies,’ he recalled.
In 1965, the year he entered the Fernão de Magalhães High School, his father brought him to Lisbon to ‘visit the city and the main monuments and watch a Benfica football game with Eusébio at Estádio da Luz’. Between Chaves and Lisbon, António Cruz Serra, president of Técnico from 2009 to 2012, learnt that ‘the conquest of power is much more fun and exciting than the exercise of power’, as Rogério Colaço summarised.
Biography
António Cruz Serra was born in Coimbra in 1956. He is Executive Trustee of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation since 12 May 2022.
Full Professor in Electronics at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, where he has lectured from 1978 to 2022.
He was Rector of Universidade de Lisboa (2013-2021), Rector of Universidade Técnica de Lisboa (2012-2013), President of Instituto Superior Técnico (2009-2012), Deputy President for Administrative Affairs at Instituto Superior Técnico (2002-2008), a member of the Fusion for Energy Executive Committee (2007-2009), President of IMEKO –International Measurement Confederation (2009-2012), President of the Board of Directors of Taguspark SA (2010-2014), President of the Consortium Linking Universities of Science and Technology for Education and Research (2010-2012).
He was also a researcher in the Biomechanics Group at the Gulbenkian Institute of Science (1979-1981), researcher at Centro de Eletrotecnia, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, INIC (1982-1994) and researcher at the Instituto de telecomunicações (1994-2024).
He was a member of the evaluation panels for the scientific research projects in Electronic Instrumentation, proposed for funding to various EU framework programmes and government agencies of Portugal, the Czech Republic, Italy and Poland.
From 1993 to 2022, he lectured Electronics subjects in the Weapons and Electronics Engineering programme at the Portuguese Naval School.
He holds a Doctoral (1992) and a Master’s (1985) Degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa. He graduated in Electrical Engineering from the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (1978).
He has authored over two hundred scientific publications.
In 2023, ULisboa inaugurated a student hall that bears his name. In 2021 he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Infante D. Henrique by the President of the Portuguese Republic.
