During the celebrations marking the 115th anniversary of Técnico, held on May 22, Fernando Pereira and Leonel Sousa, faculty members of DEEC, were awarded the title “Distinguished Professor of Técnico 2026”. This distinction recognizes Técnico professors and researchers who contribute in an exceptional way to the School’s dynamism, with significant impact across the different dimensions of academic and research activity, and who represent and lead the academic community according to the highest standards.

The ceremony featured brief interventions by the distinguished professors.

Throughout his academic career, Fernando Pereira has developed internationally recognized research in the areas of multimedia signal processing and representation. The professor has made significant contributions to the analysis, processing, coding, description, adaptation, and summarization of visual information across multiple modalities, namely images, video, and immersive approaches, including point clouds, light fields, and event-based data. “In this context, I played a pioneering and leading role in the international standardization of multimedia representation, particularly within the MPEG and JPEG standards, which have profoundly transformed access to and consumption of digital content on a global scale. This took place within numerous national and international projects since 1991,” he notes. In recent years, his research activity has focused on the convergence of multimedia, artificial intelligence, and immersive visual applications.

For the researcher, this distinction represents recognition of his work by the colleagues with whom he shares his daily life, something he considers to be the “most important and most rewarding” form of recognition. “Life has taught me, day after day, that the most important thing in teaching and research is people,” he emphasizes.

What truly remains are not only lectures, papers, theses, projects, or awards — although all of these are very valuable. What remains above all are people: the friendships built, the bonds created, the students we have accompanied, and the colleagues with whom we have had the privilege of sharing the journey.

Fernando Pereira, DEEC faculty member and researcher at the Institute for Telecommunications

Leonel Sousa is currently a professor and coordinator of the Doctoral School of Técnico and a researcher at the High-Performance Computing Architectures and Systems (HPCAS) group at INESC-ID. His work focuses on computer architecture, particularly the performance modeling of parallel and distributed systems, as well as the development of specialized processing accelerators for applications. “This research, funded by a dozen international projects and contracts with institutions and companies, supported the PhD work of 20 students who went on to hold prominent positions at leading universities and companies, such as the University of Auckland in Australia, the Instituto Superior Técnico and the University of Coimbra in Portugal, and companies such as AMD, Qualcomm, and Google DeepMind in the USA and the UK,” he notes.

For the researcher, recognition by colleagues and peers for the dedication and quality of the work carried out at Técnico is a source of pride.

It is a great honor to join the group of Distinguished Professors of Técnico, alongside colleagues I deeply respect and admire. I thank DEEC and the distinguished colleagues who kindly prepared my nomination for this distinction.

Leonel Sousa, DEEC faculty member and researcher at INESC-ID