Mario Campolargo is a Principal Scientific Officer with the European Commission DG INFSO (Information Society), heavily involved in the new initiatives in the areas of Research Networking, encompassing the deployment of a new backbone network for research in Europe and the launching of testbeds for integration and validation of new technologies. Mario Campolargo has previously been responsible, within IST and ACTS programs, for coordinating the work in areas such as Communication Management and Service Engineering. Before 1990, Mario Campolargo spent 12 years of his carrier in the R&D Centre of Portugal Telecom where he was responsible for Software development. Mario Campolargo has a Degree in Electrical Engineering by the University of Coimbra - Portugal, is Post graduated in Computing Science by the Imperial College - London, has a Post graduate Diploma in Management by the Ecole de Commerce de Solvay - Brussels and received a "Diplôme d'Etudes Européennes" by Université Catholique de Louvain-La-Neuve - Belgium.