Henrique Barros is Full Professor of Epidemiology at the Medical School and President of the Institute of Public Health, University of Porto, Portugal. Henrique is the former National Portuguese AIDS Coordinator and is the President-elect of the International Epidemiology Association. Responsible for designing and implementing the three on-going Portuguese population-based cohorts which follow adults (EPiPorto), adolescents (EPITeen) and new-borns (Generation 21); these research structures made possible to train a large number of Master and PhD candidates and resulted in multiple publications covering such topics as obesity, cardiovascular diseases, violence and social aspects of ageing besides a continued attention to methodological challenges and a special interest in perinatal epidemiology.