Born in Paços de Ferreira, he completed basic, preparatory and secondary education in local schools.

He graduated in Mathematics (Pure Mathematics branch) from the University of Porto in 1990, completed a Master's degree in Pure Mathematics at the University of Porto in 1992 and a Ph.D. in Mathematics at the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics of Rio de Janeiro in 1997.

He started as a Trainee Assistant, in 1991, having completed his entire academic career in the Department of Mathematics of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto, where he obtained the Aggregation in 2004 and has been a Full Professor since November 2019. He has been Director of the Mathematics Department since June 2020 and an integrated member of the Center of Mathematics of the University of Porto since the beginning of his career. In May 2022, he was elected corresponding member of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences.

He has supervised five master's theses, nine doctoral theses, supervised eight postdoctoral projects and coordinated four research projects.

He has lectured at more than a hundred congresses/seminars on five continents and has had several long stays at the The Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics (Trieste, Italy), Theoretical Physics Center (Luminy, France), Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaiso (Valparaiso, Chile), Federal University of Bahia (Salvador, Brazil), University of Loughborough (United Kingdom) and University of Maryland (USA).

He has about fifty scientific articles and two books published in the area of ​​Dynamical Systems and Ergodic Theory. His research interests focus on the study of statistical properties of chaotic systems.

During the four-year stay in Rio de Janeiro to carry-out his doctorate, he developed a special passion for Brazilian popular music, having honed his skills as a guitar player, with a emphasis on bossa nova.