Rita Lopes

Rita Lopes is a Technology Manager at INESC TEC’s Technology Transfer Office, where she has been working since 2023 to bridge research, software development and market adoption. Her work focuses on enabling effective knowledge transfer from academia to industry, with particular attention to the challenges posed by software-based research outputs, including open source strategies, intellectual property (IP) management and commercialisation pathways.

At INESC TEC, Rita manages a portfolio of 22 technologies in the Energy and Sea sectors, supporting their protection, valorisation and transfer to industry. She has hands-on experience in technology protection and licensing, having contributed to the licensing of three technologies in 2024. Her portfolio increasingly includes software-intensive and open source software (OSS) solutions, providing her with direct exposure to the practical, legal and organisational challenges involved in transferring software-based innovations into real-world applications. This work includes defining appropriate licensing and dissemination models, managing OSS–IP interfaces, ensuring the sustainability of software beyond project lifecycles, and aligning openness with long-term impact and institutional valorisation strategies.

Rita holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and a PhD in Environmental Engineering, both from the University of Porto. This interdisciplinary background gives her a strong understanding of both life sciences and engineering-driven research, enabling her to work closely with researchers across multiple technological domains and to translate complex research outcomes into value propositions relevant to industry and society.

Committed to continuous professional development and international collaboration, Rita is a member of ASTP. Through ASTP, as well as training activities organised by WIPO and the EPO, she has further strengthened her expertise in intellectual property, licensing strategies and best practices in knowledge transfer, particularly in the context of software- and data-driven technologies.

Beyond her core role, Rita actively contributes to institutional and collaborative initiatives, with a strong focus on OSS governance and strategic adoption. She is involved in INESC TEC’s institutional OSS initiative, working at the interface between research centres, the Technology Transfer Office and the Board to support informed decision-making on software dissemination, risk mitigation and impact maximisation. She participated in the TTO Circle IP Working Group on Benchmarking, contributing to the first benchmarking exercise among member organisations, and joined the INESC TEC SeedProjects monitoring team in 2024, having previously served on the SeedProjects evaluation panel in 2023. More recently, she became a member of the management team of INESC TEC OCEAN, further reinforcing her engagement at the intersection of technology, sustainability and societal impact.