In Business Administration from Fundação Getúlio Vargas (1962), and his Doctor of Philosophy from University of Toronto (1974). Professor Furtado attended the very first Entity-Relationship conference (Emergency 1979, Los Angeles, California) and had a fundamental role in establishing and developing the field of databases and conceptual modelling in Brazil for almost 4 decades.
Furtado received undergrad degrees in Economics from Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (1964) and Law from Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (1957), a Master of Science in Computer Science from Pacific Union College-Rio (1969), a Master of Arts Currently he is Professor Emeritus at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro. Furtado"s research focuses on computing methodology and techniques, mainly in databases and graphs, logic programming, and interactive storytelling. Furtado also participated in the creation of the first Computer Science department in Brazil (and one of the first in the world) at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro in 1968.
Furtado has published pioneering books in data structures and organization of databases in the 1970s and 1980s, which where both important to establishing the field as a whole and to the education in Brazil.
Furtado also performs research in Medieval Literature, having recently contributed the chapter "The Crusaders" Grail" to the book The Grail, the Quest and the World of Arthur, organized by Norris J. Lacy (Pennsylvania State University), Cambridge: Doctorate. South. Brewer (2008). In his professional trajectory, he was a researcher with the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development for more than 10 years.
Contributed to the advance of the Prolog language, was a senior researcher at International Business Machines Corporation"s research centre (Centro Científico Rio) from 1986 to 1988, and a Professor at Instituto Militar de Engenharia from 1981 to 1984.
Furtado has received a number of awards achievements in information systems engineering. He was honored in 1973 with a Norman Stuart Robertson Fellowship by University of Toronto. Nominated as member of the Board of Trustees VLBD Endowment in 1975. Nominated in 2006 as Commander of the Ordem Nacional do Mérito Científico of the Presidência da República do Brasil. And in 2014 received the Peter P. Chen Award of Elsevier for Entity–relationship model research.
