Carlos Moedas

Moedas was born to a communist journalist and a seamstress[2] at Beja, Alentejo, southern Portugal, in 1970. He studied at Lisbon University, graduating in 1993 with a degree in Civil Engineering from the Instituto Superior Técnico. He spent his final year studying at the ENPC (Paris) via the Erasmus Programme; he was one of the first Portuguese students to undertake an Erasmus exchange.[3]

After leaving university, Moedas worked as a project manager for the Suez Group in France between 1993 and 1998. He then took postgraduate studies at Harvard Business School, graduating in 2000 with the degree of MBA,[4] after which he came back to Europe to work in mergers and acquisitions for Goldman Sachs. He then worked at Eurohypo Investment Bank in its Real Estate Investment Banking Division, before returning, in August 2004, to Portugal, when Moedas joined the real estate consulting company Aguirre Newman Portugal[5] becoming Managing Partner until 2008, when he set up his own investment management company, Crimson Investment Management.[6]

Following the Eurozone crisis, Moedas was appointed coordinator of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) Economic Research Unit. He and Eduardo Catroga led PSD negotiations in the run-up to Portugal's 2011 State Budget, following which he was selected by PSD to contest the Beja constituency in the legislative elections held on the 5th of June 2011.

Moedas was elected to Parliament, becoming the first PSD Member of Parliament for that district since 1995.[7] The day after entering Parliament, on the 21st of June 2011, the Prime Minister appointed him to his Cabinet in the XIX Constitutional Government as Under-Secretary of State.[8]

Moedas oversaw EASME (Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises), the agency created to monitor and control the implementation of the structural reforms agreed in the context of the assistance programme by a troika composed of the European Commission, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.[9]

In 2014, Pedro Passos Coelho, Prime Minister of Portugal, nominated him as European Commissioner,[10] and Moedas' name was approved by EC President-elect Jean-Claude Juncker on 1 September. On 1 November 2014, Moedas became European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation.

• UNESCO, Member of the Advisory Board of the “Futures of Education” Initiative (since 2019)[11]
• Jacques Delors Institute, Member of the Board of Directors (since 2019)
• Re-Imagine Europa, Member of the Advisory Board[12]

• Member of the Portuguese Academy of Engineering (2014)
• Commander of the Spanish Order of Civil Merit by the King Felipe VI of Spain (2015)
• Honorary Doctorate in Laws by the University of Cork (2016) [13]
• Honorary Doctorate by ESCP Europe - École supérieure de commerce de Paris (2018)
• Honorary Fellow of the AAS - African Academy of Sciences (2018)
• Gold Medal from the Portuguese Order of Engineering (2019)

• Amaro, N. L., Moedas, C. 2011. O Novo Paradigma do Investimento Imobiliário: Análise e estratégias para um sector-chave da economia. Sabedoria Alternativa
• Bogers, M., Chesbrough, H., Moedas, C. 2018. Open Innovation: Research, Practices, and Policies. California Management Review, Volume: 60 issue: 2, page(s): 5-16
• Moedas, C. “Vento Suão: Portugal e a Europa”, Guerra e Paz, Lisboa, 2020.

• XIX Constitutional Government of Portugal (in Portuguese)
• List of Parliament members in Portugal (in Portuguese)
• Petros Christodoulou
• Massimo Tononi

• Biography on the European Commission website
• Article on Wall Street Journal by Carlos Moedas
• Article on Les Echos (French) by Carlos Moedas
• Article on Science Diplomacy and the European Union
• Article on California Management Review: Open Innovation: Research, Practices, and Policies by Marcel Bogers, Henry Chesbrough, Carlos Moedas