About Me

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

Rute’s research career spans both industry and academia. She co-founded the ULHT COPELABS research unit and served as its Scientific Director from 2013 to 2017, where she was a Senior Researcher between 2010 and 2019. She also co-founded the Portuguese startup Senception Lda (2013–2019), focused on personal communication platforms.

Her research interests include network architectures and protocols, the Internet of Things (IoT), edge computing, in-network computing, and network mining. Rute has authored over 90 peer-reviewed publications in her fields of expertise and holds 9 patents. She is a Datacom Industry Association board member, and a member of the IEEE WIE Industry Experts Network (2025–). She was an ACM Europe Councilor (2021–2025) and served as IEEE ComSoc N2Women Awards co-chair (2020–2021). She is also an ACM Senior Member and an IEEE Senior Member. 

Prior to joining fortiss, she was an Associate Professor at COPELABS/ULHT, focusing on wireless and user-centric networking, sensing, and IoT. Earlier, she co-led the “Internet Architectures and Networking” area at UTM, INESC-TEC (2007–2010), concentrating on wireless/cellular architectures and user-centric networking. Between 2004 and 2007, she was a Senior Research Scientist at Siemens AG and Nokia-Siemens Networks GmbH, working on fixed-mobile convergence, carrier-grade Ethernet, QoS, and IPv6 interoperability.

Rute holds a BEng in Informatics Engineering from Universidade de Coimbra (1995), as well as 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 (2000–2003) at Northwestern University (ICAIR) and at the University of Pennsylvania (MNLab), under the supervision of Roch Guerin. .

Technical Skills:

My background spans both industry and academia, with a core focus on networking architectures and protocols. Throughout my dual career path, I have developed deep technical expertise in wireless, cellular, and fixed networks, alongside a strong understanding of innovation cycles, technology transfer, and standardization processes.

As founder and CEO of Senception, I gained hands-on experience in product development, team leadership, and innovation-driven execution. As Scientific Coordinator and later Director of COPELABS, I acquired comprehensive experience in research and innovation management, including the creation of research teams from the ground up, development of research infrastructures, and guiding projects from concept to proof-of-concept and technology transfer.

My industry background further strengthened my ability to translate research into real-world solutions and to connect innovation strategies with product-driven outcomes.