Jaime E. Villate

Jaime Villate obtained a B.S. in Physics from the National University of Colombia and completed the five-year coursework on Systems Engineering at Distrital University of Bogotá both in 1983. In 1984 he worked as Systems Analyst at the National University of Colombia and taught at the center for Technical Administrators of ``SENA'', in Bogotá. He received the M.A. (1987) and Ph.D. (1990) in Physics from the University of Rochester, State of New York, U.S.A. He was awarded a Fulbright scholarship (1984-89), a graduate fellowship from the National University of Colombia (1984-86) and a research assistantship from the Department of Energy (1986-90). In 1990 he moved to Lisbon, Portugal, as a post-doctoral fellow in the center for Nuclear Physics, Research Complex II, INIC. He joined the School of Engineering of the University of Porto in 1992, as a Visiting Assistant Professor, becoming an Assistant Professor in 1994. In 2001-2002 made part of the founding committee for the new Department of Physics.

Research and Teaching Interests

His main research interests have been in the areas of theoretical physics and computing. In the area of computing, he worked on the information system for the Architecture Department Library at the National University of Colombia (1984), and he has taught introduction to microcomputers at the center for Technical Administrators in Bogotá, where he set up a microcomputers center (1984). He is currently working in the development of Savannah and collaborates in several Free Software projects: Debian, GNU and La Espiral. He is the president of the National Association for Free Software (ANSOL).

His doctoral dissertation (1985-1990) was on the area of particle physics (application of the theory of quarks in nuclear physics); between 1990 and 1992 he conducted post-doctoral research in Lisbon (hadron properties from quark models with strong interaction). He is currently involved in a research project at CERN: Information Systems and Data Acquisition for ATLAS..

During a few years he conducted research in the field of physical properties of food, participating in the European project Creation of a Database of Physical Properties of Food; he is a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Food Properties, published by Dekker.

At the School of Engineering (FEUP), he has taught electromagnetism, vector mechanics and differential equations. He has co-oriented a Ph.D. project on Chemical Engineering (magnetic separation) and several senior projects of computer science students. He is the editorial director of the Textbook Series of FEUP Edições.

Selected Publications

1. Villate, J. E., Electromagnetismo, McGraw-Hill, Lisboa, 1999, ISBN 972-773-010-8.

2. Augusto P.A., Martins J.P. and Villate J.E., ``A New Prototype to Separate Solid Particles by Centrifugal and Magnetic Forces'', in proceedings de Further Developments, in Filtration and Separation II, eds. A. Macias Machin e A. Estevez, 1998, pags. 339-348.

3. J. E. Villate, D.-S. Liu, J. E. Ribeiro and P. J. de A. Bicudo, ``Quark-antiquark interaction and chiral symmetry'', in Proceedings of the International Conference on Many-body Physics, Coimbra, September 1993, edits. C. Fiolhais et al, World Scientific, Singapore, 1994, pgs. 189-192.

4. J. E. Villate, D.-S. Liu, J. E. Ribeiro and P. J. de A. Bicudo, ``Chiral symmetry and spin dependence of the quark-antiquark forces in quarkonium'', Physical Review D, 47: 1145 (1993).

5. P. J. Bicudo, G. Krein, J. E. Ribeiro and J. E. Villate, ``Hadron masses in a chirally symmetric confining model'', Physical Review D, 45: 1673-1685 (1992).

6. J. E. Villate, ``Quarks in Hadrons and Nuclei'', in Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Relativistic Aspects of Nuclear Physics, Rio de Janeiro, August 1991, edits. T. Kodama et al, World Scientific, 1992, pags. 371-375.

7. J. E. Villate and D. S. Koltun, ``Nuclear medium modification of nucleons via a Bethe ansatz model'', Physical Review C, 43: 1967-1980 (1991).

Software

1. Maintainer of the GNU gradebook, an application for tracking student grades for teachers, originally written by Norbert de Jonge.

2. Author of Parsewiki, a documentation system with very simple formating tags.

3. Author of psimage, a system to produce graphs and diagrams, based on PostScript.

4. Author of xhtmltools, a system to produce documents in various formats, based on XHTML and XSLT.

5. Author of LE-document, documentation system used for project La Espiral.

6. Author of ORCA (Organizador de Referendum CAstellano) a live glossary of computing terms for English-Spanish translators.