João Neves is the Aerospace Manager at Thales Edisoft Portugal.
He is an Weapons and Electronics Engineer graduated by the Portuguese Naval Academy, holds a Master of Science by the Instituto Superior Técnico in Telecommunications and was a PhD candidate in the area of synthetic aperture radar.
During his career he has served the Navy onboard of several vessels as well as at the Navy Communications Directorate, the Armaments Directorate – Portuguese MoD and the Naval Academy , where he was a lecturer in several related disciplines.
In January 2021 he joined Thales Edisoft where he has been responsible for several projects related to Space communications and operations, including the operation of a Teleport in Santa Maria island-Azores, one of the most important space infrastructures in Portugal.
As Aerospace Manager, his area also includes satellite onboard technology development, such as real-time operating systems and the Earth Observation area, dedicated to the use of satellite data to enhance the situational awareness, mostly focused on the maritime domain, being Thales in Portugal the only Portuguese company providing regular operational maritime observation services to EMSA (European Maritime Safety Agency), for almost 16 years