In February 2009, Dr. Barros was appointed National Director of the CMU-Portugal Program, a five-year international partnership between Carnegie Mellon University and 12 Portuguese Universities and Research Institutions, with a total budget of 56M Euros.
Dr. Barros received a Best Teaching Award from the Bavarian State Ministry of Sciences, Research and the Arts, as well as scholarships from several institutions, including the Fulbright Commission (for a research stay at Cornell University), the Japanese Foreign Ministry and the Luso-American Foundation (for a sabbatical at MIT). Beyond his duties as Secretary of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Information Theory Society, his service included co-chairing the 2008 IEEE Information Theory Workshop in Porto, Portugal, and participating in numerous Technical Program Committees.