About Me

Rute C. Sofia (PhD, 2004 "Summa cum Laude") is the Industrial IoT Head at fortiss — the research institute of the Free State of Bavaria for software-intensive services and systems — and an Invited Associate Professor at Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias. She is also an Associate Researcher at ISTAR-IUL, ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa.

Her research sits at the intersection of networked systems, applied AI, and industrial IoT. Core interests include cognitive edge–cloud orchestration, AI-driven and agentic systems for industrial/IIoT environments, deterministic wireless networking, 6G, and context-aware data services. She has authored over 90 peer-reviewed publications and holds 8 patents across Europe and the USA.

Rute's career spans more than 20 years across industry, academia, and entrepreneurship. At fortiss she leads the IIoT research team and coordinates large-scale European and bilateral projects, including CODECO (€6.06M, Horizon Europe), EU-IoT (€2.0M, H2020), EFPF (€16.2M, H2020), and the Sino-German SemIIoT project. Prior to fortiss, she was an Associate Professor and co-founder of the COPELABS research unit at Universidade Lusófona (2010–2019), where she served as Scientific Director from 2013 to 2017. She also co-founded Senception Lda (2013–2019), a Portuguese startup focused on personal communication platforms, recognised as National Winner of the European Business Awards in the Digital Technology category (2017/2018). Earlier in her career, she was a Senior Research Scientist at Siemens AG Corporate Technology (2004–2007) and Nokia Siemens Networks (2007) in Munich, contributing to research on carrier-grade Ethernet, mobile-fixed convergence, and IPv6, and to 5 granted patents across both organisations. Between 2007 and 2010, she co-led the Internet Architectures and Networking area at INESC-TEC, Porto.

She is a Board Member of the Datacom Industry Association (2025–), Energy Working Group Co-chair at AIOTI (2024–), and CONASENSE Platform Coordinator (2021–). She served as ACM Europe Councilor (2021–2025), IEEE WiE Industry Expert Network Region 8 (2025–2026), IEEE ComSoc WICE Industrial Liaison Deputy (2022–2023), AIOTI Testbeds Working Group Co-chair (2021–2023), and IEEE ComSoc N2Women Awards Co-chair (2020–2022). She is an ACM Senior Member, an IEEE Senior Member, and was recognised as Person of ACM in 2021.

Rute holds a BEng in Informatics Engineering from Universidade de Coimbra (1995), and an MSc (1999) and a PhD (2004, Summa Cum Laude) in Informatics from Universidade de Lisboa. During her doctoral studies she was a visiting scholar at the Internet Center for Advanced Internet Research (ICAIR), Northwestern University (2000), and at the Multimedia and Networking Laboratory (MNLab), University of Pennsylvania (2000–2003), under the supervision of Roch Guérin.

Technical Skills:

Her background combines deep technical expertise with hands-on leadership across both industry and academia, with a core focus on networking architectures and protocols, packet-based networking, and applied AI for networked systems. She brings extensive experience across wireless, cellular, and fixed networks, together with a strong understanding of how technologies move from research to market through innovation cycles, standardisation, and technology transfer.

As Founder and CEO of Senception (National Winner, European Business Awards – Digital Technology 2017/2018), she led product development from concept to delivery, built and managed multidisciplinary teams, and drove innovation with a strong focus on real-world deployment and customer value. In parallel, as Scientific Coordinator and later Director of COPELABS, she managed large-scale research and innovation activities, established teams and infrastructures from scratch, and guided projects from early ideation through proof-of-concept to technology transfer.

Beyond operational roles, she actively contributes to strategic ecosystem development through her involvement in AIOTI (Co-chair, Working Group Testbeds 2021–2023; Co-chair, Working Group Energy 2024–), CONASENSE (Steering Board and Coordinator), ACM Europe Council 2021–2025, and as a Board Member of the Datacom Industry Association (2025–). In these contexts, she supports agenda setting, cross-sector collaboration, and alignment between research, industry, and policy, helping shape roadmaps for next-generation data communications and IoT.