Mário Marques Freire was born in Seia, Portugal, on March 21, 1969. He received the degree of licentiate in electrical engineering and the M. Sc. degree in systems and automation in 1992 and 1994, respectively, from the University of Coimbra, Portugal. He received the Ph. D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Beira Interior, Portugal, in 2000. Presently, he is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Informatics of the University of Beira Interior, Covilhã, Portugal, where he is the Head of the Department and the Director of the M.Sc. course in Informatics Engineering.

His main research interests include high-speed networks and Internet technologies. He has been the editor of 2 books and has authored or co-authored around 90 papers in international refereed journals and conferences. He served as a technical program committee member for several IEEE and IASTED conferences. He was the General Chair of IEEE HSNMC'2003 and a General Co-Chair of ECUMN'2004, and he is the TPC Chair of ICN'2005. He is also a member of the editorial review board of the International Journal of Business Data Communications and Networking.

He is a licensed Professional Engineer by the Order of Engineers - Informatics College (Portugal) and he is a member of IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Communications Society and a member of the ACM SIGCOMM and of the Internet Society.