Francisco Cercas is Professor Emeritus at ISCTE-IUL, with 44 years of professional experience. He began his career teaching Mathematics in Secondary Education and working as a Research Engineer at CENTREL EID (1982-1983), before joining the academic career in 1984. He lectured at Instituto Superior Técnico for 15 years and later joined ISCTE-IUL. He was a researcher at CAPS, INESC and the Satellite Centre of the University of Plymouth (UK), and is currently a researcher at the Instituto de Telecomunicações, Radio Group.
He is co-author of a new class of codes named TCH (Tomlinson, Cercas, Hughes) and has more than 200 publications, including one patent, 5 book chapters, 30 international journal papers, more than 150 conference papers and several international research reports. He supervised and co-supervised 8 PhD theses, as well as many MSc dissertations and Final Year Projects at IST and ISCTE-IUL.
He participated in several national and international projects and was National Delegate of four European COST projects. He was President of the University Scientific Council (ISCTE-IUL 2015-2018), School Dean (ISTA 2010-2013) and Head of Department (DCTI 2007-2010). He is Senior Member of IEEE and was National Coordinator of Telecommunications at Ordem dos Engenheiros between 2014 and 2022.
His research interests include mobile and satellite communications, coding theory, spread spectrum communications and related topics.