José Paulo Marques dos Santos completed his PhD in Management at the Technical University of Lisbon in 2011, with a thesis on brand perception using fMRI. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Coimbra and a DEA in Marketing and Market Research from the University of A Coruña. He is currently Vice-Rector at UMAIA, Director of the Pedagogic Innovation Office, and Associate Professor in the Department of Business Administration. He is a Visiting Researcher at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Porto, an Integrated Researcher at LIACC (Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science Lab, University of Porto), and at LASI (Associated Laboratory for Intelligent Systems). He also collaborates with NECE – Research Center for Business Sciences at the University of Beira Interior. Prof. Santos has authored over 28 publications, including journal articles, book chapters, and books, in outlets such as Frontiers in Neuroscience, Journal of Brand Management, IEEE Access, and Machine Learning & Knowledge Extraction. He is on the Editorial Board of SAGE Open and has organised 11 scientific events, including being co-founder of the ICMarkTech conference, now in its seventh edition. He hosted the DeepLearn Summer School in 2024 and 2025, and will host CESArtIn 2026. He has supervised one PhD thesis (three ongoing), 17 master’s dissertations (one ongoing), and received multiple academic conference awards. He has coordinated or participated in eight competitive research projects, including one in Brazil. He currently leads the Pedagogia XXI Centre for Pedagogical Excellence and Innovation, funded by the Portuguese government. His research focuses on neuroscience, fMRI, EEG, tDCS, consumer decision-making, explainable AI, machine learning, and active learning in digital pedagogy.