Last Friday, April 5th, distinguished INESC-ID researchers Ana Paiva and Alberto Rodrigues da Silva were officially appointed as Secretaries of State in a ceremony at Ajuda Palace in Lisbon, presided over by the President of the Portuguese Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.

Ana Paiva* is the new Secretary of State for Science, serving under the Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation, while Alberto Rodrigues da Silva** has taken the role of Secretary of State for Modernisation and Digitalisation, under the Ministry of Youth and Modernisation. They were inaugurated alongside 41 colleagues appointed across 17 different ministries.

*Ana Paiva is a researcher at INESC-ID within the Artificial Intelligence for People and Society research area and a Full Professor of Artificial Intelligence at Técnico, University of Lisbon. Her recent research focuses on engineering agents and robots capable of collaborating with humans in groups, fostering transparent, prosocial, and altruistic societies. She has served on the Global Agenda Council in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics of the World Economic Forum and as a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Science Europe. She is a fellow of the AAAI, EurAI, and ELLIS.

**Alberto Silva is a researcher at INESC-ID within the Information Systems research area and a Full Professor in the Department of Computer Engineering at Técnico, University of Lisbon. He is a member of the Project Management Institute (PMI), a senior member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), part of the QUATIC Series Scientific Steering Committee, and a member of GPSI/APSI, the Working Group for Information Systems Project Management of the Portuguese Association for Information Systems.

(photo: andresmh / Flickr)