Jorge Goncalves graduated from University of Porto with a Licenciatura in 1993, and a MSc and PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1995 and 2000, respectively, all in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. From 2001 to 2004 he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at California Institute of Technology.

He is a University Lecturer at the University Cambridge in the Department of Engineering. He is in the Control Systems Group in the Information Engineering Division.