Rui Guerra graduated with a degree in Physics (1991) and an MSc in Nuclear Physics (1995; area of Particle Physics), both from the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Lisbon, and obtained a PhD in Physics from the IST, Technical University of Lisbon (1999; area of Plasma Physics). In 2000, he was a post-doc in the Laser Physics Group at the University of Umeå, Sweden, in the area of Laser Spectroscopy. He joined the University of Algarve in 1996 as a lecturer and became an Assistant Professor in 2000. His current interests include light scattering and absorption in biological media and its application to the non-destructive measurement of fruit tissue properties. Another related area is the detection of fruit physio-pathologies by optical means using, e.g., fluorescence and, more recently, through electrical measurements.