Gonçalo Quadros

Gonçalo Quadros is the co-founder and CEO of Critical Software, a Coimbra-born technology company he built into a global leader in safety- and business-critical systems, serving the aerospace, defence, automotive, rail, energy, healthcare and finance sectors. He founded the company in 1998 alongside fellow University of Coimbra engineers João Carreira and Diamantino Costa, after NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory contracted them for their fault-injection software expertise — the breakthrough that took the company from a university spin-off to an international business with subsidiaries in the US, Germany and the UK. Before entrepreneurship, he worked as an engineer at EDP and Soporcel (now The Navigator Company), and taught at the Universities of Aveiro and Coimbra, where he earned his PhD in Computer Science and Computer Networks. He led Critical Software as CEO for over a decade, stepped back to non-executive chairman in 2012, and returned as CEO in 2014 to drive its international expansion — spinning off nine technology ventures along the way, including Critical Manufacturing and Critical Links. He was awarded the Order of Merit, Grand-Officer, by the President of Portugal in 2006, the INSEAD Entrepreneurship Award, EY's Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year, and the University of Coimbra Prize in 2019.