Rui José is an Adjunct Professor at the United Nations University (UNU-EGOV) since 2024.
Rui José has extensive experience in over 24 research and industry projects, focusing on locative media, smart cities and urban mobility. He has been PI or co-PI in 9 projects, with funding from FP7, FET-OPEN, Portugal/CMU, FCT and Compete.
Within smart cities, his research interests include designing and developing novel urban platforms. These new tools for civic engagement and locative services intelligently blend digital information with specific physical and social settings. This involves producing a real, positive and long-lasting impact across multiple communities by addressing the sensitive balances between the power of digital innovation and the policies needed to frame that innovation, particularly in the context of local governments.
Rui José is also an associate professor at the University of Minho and Director of the Information Systems Department. He is a full member of Centro Algoritmi, where he leads the Urban Computing group. He is also a co-coordinator at the Smart Cities thematic line in LASI (Associate Laboratory on Intelligent Systems).
He has over 150 publications in books, book chapters, journals and proceedings of international and national conferences, 100 of which are indexed (WoS, Scopus) and 24 are international collaborations (co-authored with researchers from non-Portuguese institutions). He has over 600 citations in Scopus (h-index = 11) and over 1350 citations in Google Scholar (h-index = 16, index-i10=27). Publications include top journals and conferences, such as Ubicomp Conferences, IEEE Computer, Sensors, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, IEEE Pervasive Computing or Personal and Ubiquitous Computing.
Rui José holds a Ph.D. in Computing (2001), granted by Lancaster University, UK.