Joana Mendonça

Joana Mendonça is an Associate Professor at Instituto Superior Técnico, where she teaches Innovation Management, Design Thinking, Entrepreneurship, and Project-based courses. She currently serves as Vice-President of IST for the Oeiras campus. Her research focuses on innovation, technology, and development policies at the IN+ Center for Studies. From 2021 to 2023, she was President of the National Innovation Agency and co-coordinated both the Master’s in Innovation and Entrepreneurship Engineering and the PhD in Engineering and Public Policy. Joana was also part of the scientific leadership of the Carnegie Mellon Portugal partnership (2014-2021) and served as scientific coordinator at CEiiA (2018-2021). Previously, she was an advisor to the Minister of Economy in 2016, Deputy Director-General at the Directorate-General for Education and Science Statistics (2010-2012), and advisor to the Secretary of State for Science, Technology, and Higher Education (2009-2010).