PhD student in mechanical engineering with a focus on structural integrity at the University of Coimbra. He holds a Master's degree in mechanical engineering from the same institution. Hugo's is currently focused on developing numerical models for predicting the behaviour of composite materials in hostile environments. One of Hugo's significant assets is his programming expertise, which enables him to tackle research problems from a technical standpoint and proficiently analyse and interpret data. Throughout his academic career, Hugo has shown particular interest in programming and structural integrity, which motivated him to pursue these fields of study. He learned finite element software such as Ansys and Abaqus and programming languages such as Python, Fortran, and Visual Basic. During his master's thesis, he created a numerical model that simulated the impact of marine exposure on composite material's static behaviour. Although this topic is very complex and not well understood in the literature, he developed an automatic iterative procedure programmed in Fortran, integrated into the commercial finite element software Abaqus. His research culminated in his first scientific article published in Polymers, a Q1 journal with an impact factor of 4.967. Currently, he has obtained a research grant from CEMMPRE and is utilizing their facilities to generate further scientific outputs. Upon receiving the scholarship, Hugo embarked on a mission to disseminate his scientific research findings via oral presentations at international speciality conferences. To this end, Hugo has participated in the following conferences: the 6th International Conference on Structural Integrity and Durability (ICSID 2022) held in Dubrovnik, Croatia, September 20-23, 2022; the 1st International Conference on Materials Science (ICMS 2022) held in Porto, Portugal from November 3-4, 2022; and the upcoming International Conference on Recent Advances in Structural Engineering and Mechanics (IRAS 2023) to be held, in Belgrade, Serbia from April 2-4, 2023. Following his presentation at ICSID 2022, Hugo published his work on the failure criteria of composite materials in Procedia Structural Integrity. The paper has already been submitted and is currently in press. In addition, Hugo was invited to submit an extended version of this paper presented at the ICM 2022 to Theoretical and Fracture Mechanics, Elsevier, a Q1-ranked journal. The article applies the numerical model developed in his master's thesis to predict the effect of exposure time in seawater on the fatigue life of composites. Predictably, the paper will be online in April 2023. Hugo recently wrote a chapter for an Elsevier book on modelling composites using the finite element method. In the chapter, he provided a detailed description of the approach used in his dissertation. The book, which is set to be published this year, will also feature the contribution of J.N. Reddy, one of the most prominent names in the field of composite materials. Additionally, Hugo is currently writing an article on the chemical changes in composite materials when immersed in a marine environment. This publication is expected to be submitted to an international journal in May 2023.