Joao BARROS
Biographical note
An award-winning wireless engineer, academic leader and passionate entrepreneur, João Barros loves to turn complex theorems and algorithms into products and services that can make a real difference in people’s lives. After more than a decade developing new wireless networking technologies at Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM), Universidade do Porto (UPorto), MIT, and Carnegie Mellon, João founded two venture-backed startups, Streambolico and Veniam, where he serves as board director and CEO respectively. His work has led to more than 170 science and technology papers, as well as feature articles by NPR, BBC, MIT Technology Review, The Atlantic, and TechCrunch. João Barros has received several awards, including the 2010 IEEE Communications Society Young Researcher Award for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region, the 2011 IEEE ComSoC and Information Theory Society Joint Paper Award, the 2012 BES National Innovation Award, the 2013 Building Global Innovators Grand Prize (ISCTE-IUL and MIT) and a state-wide best teaching award by the Bavarian State Ministry of Sciences, Research and the Arts. Between 2014 and 2016, Veniam was the recipient of several awards: ‘best new venture’ at the WBA 2015 Wi-Fi Industry Awards; ‘best new innovative product idea most likely to succeed’ within the cable industry at the 2015 CableLabs; winner of the 2015 Red Herring Top 100 North America award; named to FierceWireless “Fierce 15” Top Wireless Company List of 2015; Cool Vendors in Smart City Applications and Solutions in 2015, by Gartner. From 2009 to 2012, he served as the National Director of the CMU Portugal Program, a five-year international partnership in education, science and innovation, funded by the Portuguese Foundation of Science and Technology, with a total budget of $77M USD. João Barros is fluent in Portuguese, German, English, French and Spanish. He received his undergraduate education in ECE from the UPorto, and Universitaet Karlsruhe (Germany), a performing arts degree in flute from the Music Conservatory of Porto, Portugal, and a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology from the TUM (Germany).
Presentation: Improving the Public Transport with The Internet of Moving Things
With the exponential growth of shared mobility services and the rapid development of autonomous vehicles, passenger transport is at the brink of massive disruption. It is also very clear that many of us prefer not to drive, particularly if we can be connected and productive during our commutes. To meet these market pressures and the growing expectations of riders worldwide, transport operators must reinvent themselves not only as mobility service providers but also as a key element of any smart city infrastructure. Building on Veniam’s 4 years of experience deploying mesh networks of connected buses in Porto, Singapore and New York, we will show how transport operators can (1) leverage IoT and rich data to make their fleets smarter and more effective, (2) increase ridership and rider engagement by turning vehicles into mobile Wi-Fi hotspots and (3) generate new revenue streams from mobile digital advertising (vehicles as outdoor displays) and massive urban data (vehicles as mobile sensors).
