Helder Coelho

Timeline

1. 1961–1973

   Engineering at Técnico and LNEC

   He studies engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico from 1961 to 1968 and specializes in electronics. In about 1966, he meets Luís Moniz Pereira, who draws him into cybernetics and then AI. He joins Portugal's National Laboratory for Civil Engineering (LNEC) in 1973, where he, Moniz Pereira and Fernando Pereira start AI research in Portugal.

2. 1979–1980

   TUGA and an Edinburgh PhD

   His 1979 University of Edinburgh thesis describes TUGA, a Prolog program that converses in Portuguese to provide a library service covering AI. He earns the AI doctorate in 1980 under David H. D. Warren, and LNEC publishes the thesis as a report in 1980.

3. 1979–1986

   The GEOM theorem prover

   In 1979, LNEC publishes How to Solve it with Prolog, which he writes with J. C. Cotta and Luís Moniz Pereira. With Moniz Pereira, he also writes GEOM, a Prolog geometry theorem prover issued as an LNEC report in 1979, and the two publish their work on automated reasoning in geometry theorem proving in the Journal of Automated Reasoning in 1986.

4. 1988–1995

   Prolog by Example and textbooks

   In 1988, he publishes Prolog by Example with Springer-Verlag and earns the Aggregation in mathematics at UTL. He leaves LNEC in 1989 and teaches at ISEG, drawn by the overlap of economics and AI. The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation publishes his 532-page textbook Inteligência Artificial em 25 Lições in 1995.

5. 1995–2014

   Professor of AI at FCUL

   In August 1995, he joins the Department of Informatics at the University of Lisbon's Faculty of Sciences (FCUL) as a full professor of AI, and he teaches there until 2014. He directs FCUL's research units LabMAC and LabMAg, and his research covers distributed AI, multi-agent systems, agent-based computing and natural language understanding. He becomes an effective member of Portugal's Academy of Engineering in December 1999.

6. 1996–2010

   Iberamia, ECCAI and ECAI-2010

   He chairs the Executive Board of Iberamia from 1996 to 2010 and also chairs IFIP Working Group 12.3 on agents. He becomes an ECCAI fellow in 2002, and the European Association for Artificial Intelligence (EurAI) lists him among its fellows for the University of Lisbon. From 2004 to 2008, he is president of the Institute for Complexity Sciences, and in 2010 he is Conference Chair of ECAI-2010 in Lisbon.

7. September 2017

   The emeritus title

   The University of Lisbon confers the title of emeritus on him at a ceremony in the Salão Nobre of its Reitoria in September 2017. He is also one of the founders of APPIA.

8. As of October 2026

   Emeritus professor in Lisbon

   By 2019, he coordinates the advisory council of the University of Lisbon's Mind-Brain Doctoral College. In 2023, he still keeps an office at FCUL and says consciousness interests him greatly. He is an emeritus professor of the University of Lisbon.