Virgilio Almeida

Virgilio Almeida served as the National Secretary for Information Technology Policies of the Brazilian government from February 2011 to  November 2015. He was also the chair of the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br). As Secretary  of the Brazilian government, he chaired NETmundial, the Global Multi-stakeholder Conference on the Future of Internet Governance, that was held in Sao Paulo in 2014. From 2011 to 2015, he was chairman of the board of CEITEC, a government-owned semiconductor company and chairman of board the Brazilian Research Network, that connects Brazilian universities.

Mr. Almeida is a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. He is also a professor of Computer Science at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil. Virgilio received his PhD  in Computer Science from Vanderbilt University, a Master’s degree in computer science at PUC-Rio de Janeiro and a bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering from Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG).

He held visiting positions at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, at the Computer Science Department at  Boston University and Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) in Barcelona. He held visiting appointments at Santa Fe Institute (USA), Hewlett-Packard Research Laboratoryand Xerox Research Center (PARC ). Virgilio is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (ABC) and the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS). He has been awarded the Great Cross of the National Order of the Scientific Merit by the President of Brazil.