Miguel Duarte@miguelduarte42

I’ve always been interested in computers, but my passion only started to flourish during my 3-year Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science at ISCTE-IUL. At the end the of 2nd year of my BSc, I started working at a web hosting company (http://ptws.pt) out of the need to learn even more and because I wanted see what the real world of work/technology was like. I worked as a web developer using PHP/HTML/Javascript/CSS.

I have recently finished my PhD in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence. My research focused the field of Evolutionary Robotics, which makes use of artificial neural networks and evolutionary computation to automatically synthesize controllers for robotic systems. My PhD concluded with the first demonstration of a swarm robotics system with evolved control outside of controlled laboratory conditions. I also served as a Teaching Assistant at ISCTE-IUL and Invited Assistant Professor at Universidade Europeia, in courses such as Introduction to Programming, Object Oriented Programming, Computer Architecture, and Databases.

I am currently the CTO for the Canadian healthcare startup HomeMD (https://homemd.ca).

I like to think of myself as a geek and a hacker, and I keep coming up with crazy and fun side-projects. I love programming, challenges and everything technological. I've also been affiliated with a number of organizations, such as IEEE, Google Developer Groups and Nodecopter. In the past, I have helped organize many technological events, including the first Nodecopter event in Portugal (a hackathon where the participants can spend a day programming quadrocopters), and Google DevFest (a 24h programming hackathon which had over 200 participants).