Alírio Rodrigues graduated in Chemical Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering of the U. Porto (FEUP) in 1968. After a training period in Angola at the brewery company CUCA and oil refinery FINA, he joined the Department of Chemical Engineering of U. of Luanda as a teaching assistant. In 1970, he started post-graduate studies at the Centre de Cinétique Physique et Chimique (CNRS) and ENSIC; in 1973 he obtained his Dr-Ing. degree at the U. de Nancy I, France, in the area of ion exchange. He went back to the U. Luanda end of 1973 and return to Portugal end of 1975, joining for a short period the U. of Évora and later in 1976, the Department of Chemical Engineering of FEUP. He created a research group that became the Laboratory of Separation and Reaction Engineering (LSRE). He was the Director of LSRE until 2012. Under his leadership, LSRE created the pole at IPB and obtained the status of Associate Laboratory in partnership with LCM. He was visiting professor at UTC, France, U. Virginia, USA, U. Oviedo, Spain and UFC, Brazil. Since 2013 he has been Emeritus Professor of U. Porto. He supervised more than 60 PhD students during his career and published more than 600 papers in peer-reviewed journals.