Sara Fernandes is a PhD student at University of Minho under the supervision of Professor. Luis Soares Barbosa.  

Previously Sara was a PhD Fellow at the United Nations University – Operating Unit on Policy Driven Electronic Governance (UNU-EGOV) in Guimarães, Portugal and a PhD Fellow at United Nations University – International Institute for Software Technology (UNU-IIST), Macau SAR.

Sara worked as part of the team to establish UNU-EGOV. She assisted the Agency for Administrative Modernization (AMA) to establish their research unit in Guimarães (2014). Sara also worked to established the EGOV-UMinho (2016), a platform to connect UNU-EGOV and AMA to University of Minho.

Sara successfully negotiated the first chair position at University of Minho supported by a joint venture between private sector (Portugal Telecom) and a private foundation (Luso-American Foundation for Development).

During her years at UNU-EGOV, Sara helped in the development of the “PALOP project”, a project to assist Portuguese-speaking African countries and East Timor in the development of their EGOV National Strategies, with an estimated value of 623,000 euros (total project of 6million euros), organized ICEGOV 2014, where she was responsible for fund raising (raising more than 50,000 euros in 3 months), website, and all local logistics. She was responsible to organize the opening ceremony of UNU-EGOV in 2015, and several workshops and seminars. Sara also assisted UNU-EGOV in the liaison between the Portuguese Government, national and international agencies, and private sector.

Sara is the author of the report “EGOV em Portugal: Situação, Desafios e estratégias” (June 2015).

Sara holds a BA and a MSc in Computer Science from University of Minho, Portugal.

Among several activities, Sara was a lecturer at Escola Superior de Estudos Industriais e de Gestão (ESEIG) where she taught the courses of Data Analysis and ICT, an advisor to the Secretary of State for Modernization of the XX Constitutional Government, and more recently, advisor to the company Sky Dreams Entertainment in the creation of an animated film (to be presented to UNICEF) part of a national campaign against bullying. Before finishing her BA, she worked at Multivector as an Intern. During her MSC studies she worked at Universal Tech as Data Quality Manager.