José António de Oliveira Simões was born in Albergaria-a-Nova, Branca, in 1962. His professional career can be described in two distinct moments, as a biomechanics lecturer and researcher, and as director of a higher education institution in arts and design. He obtained his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto. From the University of Aveiro he obtained his aggregation in Mechanical Engineering. At both institutions, he engaged in teaching and research activities, during which he established laboratories of Computer-Aided Design and Manufacturing, Industrial Design and Biomechanics and supervised undergraduate students, post-doctoral fellowships, doctoral and master students. He was a pioneer in the development of orthopaedic biomechanics in Portugal and responsible for the creation of the Portuguese Society of Biomechanics. In 2007 he assumed the position of director at ESAD to implement Bologna reforms. Currently, he is a Principal Coordinator Professor, president of the board of directors of ESAD, and member of the principal investigators' board of ESAD.IDEA research unit, where he is responsible for the research domain in design for life. He is also the manager of the Blue Design Alliance program, funded under the Portuguese Recovery and Resilience Plan. Among other roles, he was a guest professor at the Federal Technological University of Paraná (Brazil), an external evaluator at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin (Ireland), collaborated with the Vilnius Design College (Lithuania), and is currently Honorary Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati (India). Actually he is a master student of the Food Design program of Escola Superior de Hotelaria e Turismo do Estoril. His professional activity, particularly research, was heavily affected by the detection of colon cancer in October 2012, as he spent 5 years until late 2017 managing his health problem, which involved 4 surgeries (colon, liver performed at Paul Brousse Hospital in Paris, and two on the lungs) interspersed with 28 sessions of chemotherapy, and in addition to numerous consultations in Portugal, and over 30 consultations were conducted in Paris.