From Academic to Institutional Chair
Our founding chair and head of institute is Rui A. P. Perdigão, Chair Professor in Physics of Complex Systems and Climate Dynamics, and head of the North Atlantic Climate Centre. More recently, he has also founded the Interuniversity Institute for Intelligence, Complexity and Security, academic spinoff with extended offerings in Quantum Information and Security, Quantum Aerospace Intelligence and Quantum Technologies in the Earth and Space Sciences, leveraging his research, development and innovation in the quantum, aerospace and intelligence industries. Prof. Dr. Perdigão has developed the core methodologies, lectures and products and engaged the major institutional partners that stay with us to this very day.
The Meteoceanics Institute for Complex System Science, now present in Europe and North America, emerged from the triadic alliance between Prof. Perdigão’s interuniversity academic chair in Fluid Dynamical Systems, his research centre Interdisciplinary Centre for Complex System Scienceand his private practice into an international player across academic, research and industry sectors.
Rui Perdigão has been founding coordinator of the program on Fluid Dynamical Systems since its inception in Vienna, Austria. With the creation of our Institute and the international expansion of the program, Fluid Dynamical Systems became structured as an interuniversity chair, anchored in our institute and present across our partner institutions.
Moreover, Rui Perdigão coordinates and delivers various university courses along with international courses, seminars and workshops through our Doctoral School. He also serves as Editor in the European Geosciences Union journal Earth System Dynamics, is Section Editor-in-Chief at Climate, Associate Editor at Frontiers in Physics, aside from other editorial roles.
University Teaching
For several years, Rui Perdigão has been designing, coordinating and delivering various university courses along with international courses, seminars and workshops. Some of his most relevant courses are linked to his inter university initiative and listed at the Meteoceanics Doctoral School here.
Moreover, he has been collaborating with the Doctoral Program on Climate Change and Sustainable Development Policies, an interdisciplinary doctorate promoted primarily by the University of Lisbon and the New University of Lisbon.
There, he has introduced, been coordinating and delivering some of his interdisciplinary courses, including on Complex System Dynamics and on Interdisciplinary Data Analytics and Model Design, which he tailored to a broad audience beyond the natural and exact science frontiers, being deployed not only to engineering and natural science students but also to those coming from social sciences, economics and management.
With the launch of the Interuniversity Institute for Intelligence, Complexity and Security, these academic offerings are now mainly delivered across the participating institutions and tailored to their respective priorities, ranging from classic academic to technical, executive and operational, promoting synergies among academia, industry and society.
Moreover, he is involved in doctoral thesis supervision, coordinating doctoral research in interdisciplinary problems spanning climate system dynamics, socio-environmental complexity, multi-hazards and quantum technological enablement for these problems.
Academic and Research Alliances
Prof. Rui Perdigão chairs the international alliance for Quantum Information Technologies in the Earth Sciences(QITES) and also the NORA Research Alliance (the latter with co-coordinator Dr. Julia Hall).
Moreover, he has been conducting research, development and innovation in the aerospace industry especially for the development of new aerospace sensors, information retrieval methods and model designs to further elicit multiscale earth system dynamic processes and interactions from space, along with early warning signs of emerging hazards. Since the inception of his own organizations, his prior industry workplaces became valued customers.
Across the Earth System sciences, Rui Perdigão has taken part in various initiatives. In earlier years, he contributed as postdoctoral researcher to the development of satellite application facilities for Earth monitoring in the scope of Global Monitoring for the Environment and Security (GMES), precursor of the Copernicus program from the European Union. In the most recent years, he has been leading the development of the System-of-Systems for Multihazard Risk Intelligence Networks as WP2 leader for C2IMPRESS, Horizon Europe project funded by the European Union.
In between, among other activities he was also at the core team of the “Flood Change” consortium, headquartered at TU Wien, Vienna, Austria, and funded by the European Research Council. There, he has contributed as Earth System Dynamics representative, responsible for the development of mathematical physics methods for deciphering coevolutionary hydro-climate dynamics and river flood changes in the light of complex Earth System interactions. The collaborative effort resulted in the development of decision support products and in high-impact team publications, including in Science and in Nature.
Between 2019 and 2022 Rui Perdigão has revisited Lisbon, where he has been scientific council member of the Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes (CE3C) from the University of Lisbon, as research group leader for Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Modelling.
At the same time, he has also nurtured collaborations on Physics of Information with the Instituto de Telecomunicações at Instituto Superior Técnico from the University of Lisbon, and was co-founding signatory of the Portuguese Quantum Institute at its original incorporation.
In these areas, he pursues theoretical studies on the physical nature of information, the informational nature of physics, along with conceiving quantum information systems for addressing complex mathematical challenges beyond the realms of traditional quantum theory. At a methodological level, he develops novel techniques for data exploration and model design of complex systems, and at a practical level he investigates new techniques for quantum technological sensing of environmental phenomena.
Scientific Background and Activities
Rui Perdigão holds a Doctorate in Physics with the highest honours. He has since then conducted independent and collaborative research on mathematical physics, predictability and uncertainty dynamics, from conceptual and methodological research to applications to fluid dynamical and complex system problems in natural sciences and engineering, with specializations in quantum, aerospace and systems intelligence. He has also conducted R&D for large-scale international consortia, including the EU/ESA Copernicus Programme and the North Atlantic Alliance.
At a fundamental level, the research conducted by Rui Perdigão focuses on theoretical and methodological developments towards a novel theoretical physics paradigm bringing fundamental physical understanding to nonlinear dynamics and information theory.
One of the core efforts in this regard has been the establishment of a nonlinear synergistic dynamic theory of complex coevolutionary systems, unveiling fundamental physical principles and canonic forms bringing complexity to its simplest yet fully generative form.
Another has been the generalisation of information theory to a non-ergodic coevolutionary theory of information physics. In doing so, he addressed elusive structural functional coevolution in far-from-equilibrium non-ergodic systems where neither traditional information nor dynamical system theories worked, paving the way for retrieving and quantifying elusive dynamic predictability beyond nonlinear memory loss.
Rui’s theoretical advances are now being implemented in generalised fluid dynamical systems to address fundamental physics problems ranging across scales from quantum gravitation to coevolutionary earth system dynamics and thermodynamic cosmology. His frontier work on Fluid Dynamical Systems: from Quantum Gravitation to Thermodynamic Cosmology, share the most recent progress in these efforts to an interdisciplinary audience.
With fluid dynamical system applications in mind and particular emphasis on atmospheric dynamics, Rui Perdigão has developed a mathematical physics theory linking interaction information signatures in multiscale geophysical fluid dynamics with underlying mechanisms grounded on nonlinear scale interactions and synergistic emergence in wave mechanics and fluid flow.
In doing so, Rui Perdigão’s advances have brought out novel atmospheric insights on polyadic wave resonance among planetary, synoptic and mesoscale waves in fundamental fluid dynamic terms, explaining observed information-theoretical and nonlinear signatures of emergence, and shedding further light on elusive emergent behaviours in multiscale atmospheric flow, e.g. behind far from equilibrium transient dynamics behind “extreme” meteorological phenomena.
More recently, Rui Perdigão has expanded on his non-ergodic coevolutionary theory of information physics, generalising information theory to the realm of far-from-equilibrium statistical mechanics, where there is event codependence and the traditional information theoretical measures do not hold. His novel measures unveil and quantify elusive sources of synergistic and coevolutionary predictability beyond post-critical spatiotemporal memory loss, long after nonlinear multi-information fades away. The collapse of dynamic regimes and nonlinear memory in far-from-equilibrium non-ergodic dynamics is thus no longer an obstacle for system understanding and prediction.
The theoretical advances from Rui Pita Perdigão are now shedding light onto fundamental problems ranging across scales from evolutionary open quantum systems to coevolutionary earth system dynamics and thermodynamic cosmology, peering into the fundamental Physics of Evolutionary Complexity, and also shedding new light into Synergistic Dynamic Causation and Prediction in Coevolutionary Spacetimes.
Reaching Out to Interested Parties
Most of Rui Perdigão’s advances in Nonlinear Dynamics and Analytics have remained proprietary, securing a leading edge in providing decision support to institutions dealing with critical security challenges protecting the society and the environment.
Further knowledge transfer is also in place between Meteoceanics and institutions operating on various critical sectors ranging from aerospace and defence to energy and the environment.
Those wishing to enrol in our courses, purchase our scholarly content, contract our R&D services or otherwise establish any other cooperation are welcome to contact us.
Contacts from prospective institutional partners and collaborators are always welcome.
A never-ending learning journey
The ceaseless enthusiasm to learn is a perpetual fountain of free energy, triggering a persistent thermodynamic force to drive innovation and make things happen.
