Jorge M. Soares
From underwater vehicles to AI hallucinations. Ask me anything.
Bio
In 2024 I co-founded Finisterra with Alfonso de la Rocha and Henrique Moniz and raised $3.75M in pre-seed capital to stop AIs from making up stuff. Today I run the company and work across product, engineering, and go-to-market for Baselight , which feeds AIs with inference-time structured data that can be traced all the way to the source.
I joined Protocol Labs early on to build the research division to 30+, recruiting researchers and program managers, coordinating research across the org, and designing the funding programs that connected PL with academia and the open-source community. Later on, I contributed to P2P research, brought together the League of Entropy consortium behind the drand public randomness service, and co-founded and co-led the ConsensusLab distributed systems research team.
On the side, I volunteered with IEEE across 15 roles in as many years, starting as chair of the IST Student Branch and ending as vice-chair of the European Public Policy Committee. In between, I advised the board on digital strategy and disruptive innovation, and had the coolest gig on the (living) history committee. To be continued.
As a patent examiner at the EPO , in the Netherlands, I worked at the bleeding edge of human–computer interaction, mobile computing, and AI, reviewing patent applications on everything from neural-network accelerator architectures and spatial AR systems to chemical bleaching of screen bezels and eye-tracking interfaces for fighter jets. At least one of these is a questionable idea.
Funded by a competitive FCT fellowship, I pursued dual PhDs jointly awarded by EPFL and IST-UL . My thesis looked at multi-robot chemical plume tracing across airborne and underwater environments. I got to operate in extremely constrained marine environments (go on, try moving in an underwater formation with a 300bps acoustic modem and no GPS) and lived 3 years in an ethanol mist in an alpine wind tunnel. Got really into swarm intelligence and ants. My thesis features one too many Harry Potter references.
Back at IST-UL , I read for an MSc in Communication Networks Engineering with a specialisation in embedded systems. My thesis introduced a routing scheme for low-density mobile wireless sensor networks. I built a LEGO tram across the main hall, was an early tester of the SunSPOT JVM-on-bare-metal sensor platform, and served as sole teaching assistant for IST’s graduate-level Wireless Networks course.
My undergraduate years at IST-UL left me with a BSc in Communication Networks Engineering. I got my first research job at INESC-ID , where I implemented IR-BASE, a modular Java framework for assembling interoperable information retrieval components. Also ended up vice-chairing the student association and co-founding the computer security student group.
Publications
Guy Goren, Jorge M. Soares. “The Finality Calculator: Analyzing and Quantifying Filecoin's Finality Guarantees.” arXiv.
Jorge M. Soares. “A Metaverse of Walled Gardens?.” WIPO Conversation on Intellectual Property and the Metaverse.
Yiannis Psaras, Jorge M. Soares, David Dias. “To the InterPlanetary File System – and Beyond!.” IEEE Spectrum.
Alfonso de la Rocha, Lefteris Kokoris-Kogias, Jorge M. Soares, Marko Vukolić. “Hierarchical Consensus: A Horizontal Scaling Framework for Blockchains.” DINPS.
Jorge M. Soares. “Formation-Based Odour Source Localisation Using Distributed Terrestrial and Marine Robotic Systems.” PhD Thesis, EPFL/IST.
Jorge M. Soares, Ali Marjovi, Jonathan Giezendanner, Anil Kodiyan, A. Pedro Aguiar, António M. Pascoal, Alcherio Martinoli. “Towards 3-D Distributed Odor Source Localization: An Extended Graph-Based Formation Control Algorithm for Plume Tracking.” IROS.
Jorge M. Soares, A. Pedro Aguiar, António M. Pascoal, Alcherio Martinoli. “An Algorithm for Formation-Based Chemical Plume Tracing Using Robotic Marine Vehicles.” OCEANS.
Jorge M. Soares, Iñaki Navarro, Alcherio Martinoli. “The Khepera IV Mobile Robot: Performance Evaluation, Sensory Data and Software Toolbox.” ROBOT.
Jorge M. Soares, A. Pedro Aguiar, António M. Pascoal, Alcherio Martinoli. “A Distributed Formation-Based Odor Source Localization Algorithm — Design, Implementation, and Wind Tunnel Evaluation.” ICRA.
Jorge M. Soares, A. Pedro Aguiar, António M. Pascoal, Alcherio Martinoli. “A Graph-Based Formation Algorithm for Odor Plume Tracing.” DARS.
Francisco Rego, Jorge M. Soares, António M. Pascoal, A. Pedro Aguiar, Colin Jones. “Flexible Triangular Formation Keeping of Marine Robotic Vehicles Using Range Measurements.” IFAC WC.
Jorge M. Soares, A. Pedro Aguiar, António M. Pascoal, Alcherio Martinoli. “Design and Implementation of a Range-Based Formation Controller for Marine Robots.” ROBOT.
Jorge M. Soares, A. Pedro Aguiar, António M. Pascoal, Alcherio Martinoli. “Joint ASV/AUV Range-Based Formation Control: Theory and Experimental Results.” ICRA.
Jorge M. Soares. “Multi-robot marine systems: development and deployment.” ICRA workshop, Crossing the Reality Gap.
Jorge M. Soares, A. Pedro Aguiar, António M. Pascoal, Marco Gallieri. “Triangular Formation Control Using Range Measurements: An Application to Marine Robotic Vehicles.” NGCUV.
Jorge M. Soares, Mirko Franceschinis, Rui M. Rocha, Wansheng Zhang, Maurizio A. Spirito. “Opportunistic Data Collection in Sparse Wireless Sensor Networks.” EURASIP JWCN.
Jorge M. Soares, Bruno J. Gonçalves, Rui M. Rocha. “Practical Issues in the Development of a Minimalistic Power Management Solution for WSNs.” IJSNet.
Jorge M. Soares, Wansheng Zhang, Mirko Franceschinis, Maurizio A. Spirito, Rui M. Rocha. “Experimental and Analytical Performance Evaluation of a Real Opportunistic Wireless Sensor Network.” FNS.
Jorge M. Soares, Wansheng Zhang, Mirko Franceschinis, Maurizio A. Spirito, Rui M. Rocha. “Test-bed Implementation for Evaluating and Deploying Heterogeneous Opportunistic WSNs.” NEWCOM++ Dissemination Day.
Jorge M. Soares, Rui M. Rocha. “CHARON: Routing in Low-Density Opportunistic Wireless Sensor Networks.” IFIP WD.
Jorge M. Soares, Bruno J. Gonçalves, Rui M. Rocha. “Power Management Extensions for Tagus-SensorNet.” ICCCN.
Jorge M. Soares. “CHARON: Convergent Hybrid-Replication Approach to Routing in Opportunistic Networks — Efficient Collection Routing for Low-Density Mobile WSNs.” MSc Dissertation, IST.