José Tribolet

Last week, I had the opportunity to talk to Prof. José Tribolet about our research ideas. He has been working with Organizational Engineering for over ten years and he has been organizing the Special Track on Organizational Engineering at ACM SAC for six years. He and his team have made major contributions for organizational design and engineering with a breakthrough view on the human perspective in this area.

He presented his main research contributions and Beto and I also talked about our research projects. The talk with him was very vivid, as you can easily imagine between Portuguese and Brazilians. In a few hours, he passed this great enthusiasm for academic research and projects in industry combined, a deep concern on fundaments allied with innovative thinking, involvement in details and thorough understanding of the main picture he envisions for his projects. When we arrived, the board had the division of work between all students so they all worked aiming at combined goals.

Just with few talks with him, you know that he is an outstanding professional with a great human side :-) 

But hearing it from someone who knows him more closely is even better, I was moved by the acknowledgements on Artur Caetano's PhD thesis and, if I may quote it: "Professor José Tribolet  [...] taught me that a PhD is about the process of becoming something else. It was his inspiration [...] that helped me in this transformation process of growing as a person and as a scientist, which I consider far greater than the contributions summarized in these pages." 

Reference: Artur Miguel Pereira Alves Caetano, Business Process Modelling with Objects and Roles, PhD Thesis, Instituto Superior Técnico, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal, May 2008.

Besides teachings for my research, I've confirmed something that I had been noticing in some people, which is to put your heart in what you do, everything that comes out is so much more appreciated by everyone.