Nicolas Vasconcellos received the Electrical and Electronic Engineering B.Sc. and M.Sc. from the Polytechnic of Leiria. In December 2024, he enrolled in the PhD program in Digitalisation Engineering offered by the Polytechnic of Leiria in association with the Polytechnic of Cávado and Ave and the Technological University of the Shannon in Irland. At the B.Sc., he started to participate in projects at the Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT) – Leiria, beginning with the FCT-funded "Verão com Ciência 2022" and culminating in a highly-graded bachelor’s project on explainable AI for medical imaging. Within the scope of this work, he researched and developed a novel methodology for optimizing artificial neural networks in medical image clustering and classification tasks, outperforming the state-of-the-art explainable AI methods. This work led to a forthcoming publication in Computers in Biology and Medicine and was selected for presentation at the RUN-EU Student Research Colloquium in February 2025, hosted by the Technological University of the Shannon in Ireland. In his master’s dissertation, carried out under the FCT-funded CoMBINNe project, Nicolas explored object detection within the compressed domain of the novel JPEG-AI codec, the first international standard for image coding based on an end-to-end learning-based approach. This work earned him a high grade (19 out of 20) and currently being prepared for publication in a high-impact journal. He also attended the prestigious COMULIS Training School, gaining practical experience in multi-modal imaging technologies such as CT, MRI, PET, and EM systems. His doctoral research focuses on the analysis and processing of medical images in the compressed domain, with particular emphasis on image classification, object segmentation, and the integration of explainable AI components. He is actively involved in the RUN Discovery Student Academy, a pioneering mentoring program coordinated by the Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences (FHV), enhancing his skills in research methodologies and international collaboration. Nicolas received the “IEEE Signal Processing Society Scholarship”, an award granted to only 45 students worldwide from over 250 applicants, in recognition of outstanding achievements in the field. Alongside his academic and research pursuits, he has played an active leadership role in the IEEE Student Branch at the Polytechnic of Leiria. He is the founder and current Chair of the Signal Processing Society Student Branch Chapter and was recently elected Chair of the Student Branch itself. This involvement has provided him with the opportunity to organize and participate in workshops and seminars on signal processing-related topics, further developing his academic network and outreach.