João Ribeiro da Costa

Assistant Professor (Adjunct)

João Ribeiro da Costa has a lifelong experience in information technologies, combined with a practical entrepreneurial experience. Having completed his degree in Civil Engineering in the Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal he got his Ph. D. in Lancaster University. The first phase of his career was in Reseach (Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil) and University teaching (Professor at the New University of Lisbon, Invited Professor at Universidade Católica Portuguesa, the University of London, University of Parma).

In 1996 he made a major switch to the private enterprise world and cofounded Chiron Information Systems, after a challenge from the NASA Kennedy Space Center. Since then he cofounded echiron in 2000 (the first ASP and MSP in Portugal), Guestcentric (a SaaS company) in 2008 and Truewind-Chiron in 2010 (Software Development). By the end of 2013 the 3 companies employed about 120 people, with a turnover of about 8M€. In February 2014 echiron was acquired by Claranet and thus integrated in a large MSP with European scale.

 In 2015 he returned to the CATÓLICA-LISBON to launch new  programmes on the Digital Business area. In 2017 he became Head of Digital Transformation at CATÓLICA-LISBON, with the mission of helping the School defining and executing its digital vision. In his professorship role he teaches Digital Transformation at Masters, MBA, Bachelors and Executive Education and launched and coordinates the Executive Programs on Digital Acceleration, Digital Transformation, Design Thinking and RGPD/GDPR Data Protection Regulation.