GITMob (Transport and Mobility Interest Group) was established in 2019 by a group of students and alumni from the Doctoral Program in Transport Systems at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP) who were looking for an informal space to share research and learn about ongoing projects from other peers.
In its early years, GITMob organized local sessions that provided students from FEUP and other institutions with a forum to present their research, and arranged technical visits to foster the connection between research and practice. The group’s activities took a new direction during the pandemic lockdown, when online sessions called GITMob Caffè were introduced, bringing together small groups of researchers.
Today, GITMob is managed by a steering committee that organizes events on any transport and mobility-related topics, welcoming participants from both academia and industry. These events can take various formats and maintain an informal nature that allows for open discussions and sharing knowledge, experiences, and insights.
Steering committee
Sérgio Pedro Duarte (coordinator) is a Researcher at the Institute for Sustainable Construction and an Invited Assistant Professor at FEUP, being engaged in teaching at the Department of Civil and Georesources Engineering and the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management. Duarte obtained his Ph.D. in Transport Systems at the University of Porto and holds a MSc. in Civil Engineering and a MSc. in Services Engineering and Management, from the same university. He is an integrated member of CITTA – Research Centre for Territory, Transports and Environment, where is has participated in several research projects and organized several events as a coordinator and chair. He is an ambassador for the AET, a member of the board of communications of EWG-DSS, and a member of the CRUSOE network. Duarte’s main research topics include urban mobility and road safety, information systems management and digitalization, decision-making, and service design.
Ana Loureiro is a researcher at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP). With a background in Mechanical Engineering, she holds a PhD in Transport Systems and is an integrated member of CEGI at INESC TEC. Her research interests are strongly focused on operations management and data-driven decision-making supported by analytical methods. Her work spans data science and business analytics, including the application of machine learning techniques for sales and demand forecasting in the fashion retail sector. She has also conducted applied research in the transportation sector, developing decision-support models and tools to improve the sustainability of the taxi industry—addressing issues such as fleet decarbonization, operational efficiency, and customer retention. Currently, her research also explores waste management and the circular economy.
António Lobo is a Senior Researcher at the Department of Civil and Georesources Engineering (DECG) of FEUP, where he coordinates the Spatial Planning and Transports Laboratory and is an Integrated Member of the Research Centre for Territory, Transports and Environment (CITTA). António’s research interests cover different topics related to Transport Engineering and Management, including road safety, human factors, technology forecasting, transport economics and urban mobility, having been involved in various R&D and consultancy projects in these areas. He is also co-author of several publications in peer-reviewed journals and conferences. Currently, António serves as member of the board of the Association for European Transport (AET), coordinator of the operational project PO03 – Freight Transport at the Conference of Rectors of the Universities of the European South West (CRUSOE), member and auditor of the International Co-operation on Theories and Concepts in Traffic Safety (ICTCT), member of the Transport Safety Committee of the Pan American Society for Transport and Logistics Research (PANAMSTR), and associate editor of European Transport Research Review (ETRR).
Joana Hora has a Ph.D. in Transport Systems from the University of Porto under the MIT Portugal Program. She has been developing research work with INESC (CEGI) and FEUP within the scope of different research projects. She received an M.Sc. in Industrial Engineering in 2009 and an M.Sc. in Quantitative Methods in 2012 from the University of Porto. Her interests include operational research, optimization methods, transportation systems, data mining, and statistics.
Marta Campos Ferreira is an Assistant Professor at Faculty of Engineering of University of Porto (FEUP) and a Senior Researcher at INESC TEC. She is the Vice-Director of the Master in Services Engineering and Management at FEUP. She holds a PhD in Transport Systems from FEUP (MIT Portugal Program), a M.Sc. in Service Engineering and Management from FEUP and a degree in Economics from the Faculty of Economics of University of Porto (FEP). She is Associate Editor of the Expert Systems With Applications Journal and Associate Editor of the International Journal of Management and Decision Making. She has been involved in several R&D projects in areas such as technology enabled services, transport and mobility, with enormous impact on the economy and society and which resulted in several functional prototypes. She is the author of several publications in conferences and international scientific journals. Her current research interests include service design, human computer interaction, data science, knowledge extraction, sustainable mobility and intelligent transport systems.
Thiago Sobral is the Technical Coordinator for Research, Development, and Innovation at OPT and has been an Invited Assistant Professor from the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management at FEUP since 2014. His areas of interest focus on the intersection of Intelligent Transportation Systems, Information Visualization, and Ontology Engineering. He was a member of INESC between 2016 and 2021, at the Centers for Industrial Engineering and Management (CEGI) and Center for Enterprise Systems Engineering (CESE) in 2022, where he developed research activities in the field of Intelligent Transport Systems (Urban Mobility and Port Logistics), and the application of Information and Communication Technologies, namely Ontology Engineering and Data Visualization. During this period, he visited foreign institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Indian Institute of Technology Patna (IIT Patna), where he actively participated in research projects in these areas. He holds a B.Sc. degree in Applied Mathematics from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (2011), a Master’s Degree in Service Engineering and Management from FEUP, and a Ph.D. in Transport Systems from the same institution, within the scope of the MIT Portugal Program.
Former steering committee members
Vera Costa has a degree in Mathematics at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto and a Master Degree in Data Analysis and Decision Support Systems at the Faculty of Economics of the same university. She started to teach mathematics to high school and, after that, information systems to college students. She participated in several research projects, and she contributes with her knowledge of statistical analysis and software programming, in different application fields, such as health, politics, and transportation.