Graduated in Civil Engineering from the Technical University of Lisbon – IST in 1977, and received a Doctor-Engineer Degree by “Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées”- Paris in 1985. Later on, the PhD degree in Civil Engineering was recognised by the Technical University of Lisbon – IST in 1987 and the “Habilitation” in Civil Engineering in 1998.
In 1987 he gained the specialist degree at the National Laboratory of Civil Engineering (LNEC), distinguished with Manuel Rocha Award. In 28th November 2016 delivered the XXXIII Manuel Rocha Lecture, Award of SPG & AGAA-UNL.
In 2001 he gets the degree of specialist in Geotechnique attributed by the Portuguese Order of Engineers. In 1998, he created the Geotechnical Research Centre at the Technical University of Lisbon – IST and it was its President until 2000.
He was from 2003 until May 2020 Full Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Minho and from 2003 to 2007 he was Director of the Civil Engineering Research Centre at the University of Minho. He was from May 2010 until 2013 Director of the Research Centre of Territory, Environment and Construction. He is from 2014 member of the Institute for Sustainability and Innovation in Structural Engineering. He was also from 2010 until May 2020 chair of the Doctoral program in Civil Engineering. From May 2013 to October 2019 was Vice-Dean of the School of Engineering of University of Minho.
He delivered the 2nd Proctor Lecture, Honor lecture of ISSMGE, at the 19th ICSMGE, Seoul, 2017. He was also from 2004 to 2008 President of the Portuguese Geotechnical Society.
Since 2013, he has served as an expert and external member of Agency for Assessment and Accreditation of Higher Education – A3ES. He was the one of founding editors for the international journals ”Transportation Geotechnics”, and ” Transportation Engineering, both published by Elsevier.
He is also editor of the Journal “Geotecnia” (SPG, ABMS, SEMSIG). He was one of the founding members of the International Society for Intelligent Construction (ISIC). He received the 2017 IICTG Technical Achievement Award.
He is elected member of the Board of Directors of the Université Gustave Eiffel (2020-2025) and since 2020 core advisory member of the Transport Research Centre of the University of Technology Sydney. He is involved in research, teaching and consulting in the general field of geotechnical engineering and particularly in transportation geotechnics for more than 42 years. He has over 400 technical papers published on these subjects.