Berta Batista was born in 1964 and has a degree (1987) and MSc (1993) in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Porto. From 1989 to 1995 she was a teaching assistant at the Department of Electronic Engineering of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro University (UTAD). She was also responsible for the university computer services and leaded the installation of the campus network and computer services infrastructure. Since 1995 she is teaching assistant in the Computer Engineering Department, School of Engineering of the Polytechnic Institute of Porto. She was working towards the PhD in the analysis, design and implementation of communication architectures supporting flexible real-time systems. She was especially interested in dependable and evolvable distributed real-time applications supported by switched Ethernet networks.