Rui Boaventura graduated in Chemical Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP) in 1969 and joined the Department of Chemical Engineering of FEUP as Research Technician in 1972. In 1979 he moved to the research career starting as Research Assistant. Later in 1986 he obtained the PhD degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Porto after defending a thesis on Biological Denitrification in Biofilm Reactors. He continued the research career until 2010, the year he retired as Principal Investigator. However, he remains collaborating with FEUP as co-supervisor of doctoral theses and is an integrated member of LSRE-LCM.

He is co-author of 261 Scopus-indexed documents (h-index 46 and 8418 total citations), 15 book chapters, more than 350 communications in national and international meetings and of the EU Patent 2784031. He supervised or co-supervised 8 Postdoctoral research works, 25 PhD theses and more than 50 MSc dissertations and coordinated or was team member of 34 research projects funded by public and private organizations.

He was a member of the Assembly of Representatives and of the Scientific Council of FEUP, integrated the Executive Board of the Department of Chemical Engineering, and was Director of the Department of Chemical Engineering of FEUP, Director of the MSc in Environmental Engineering, Director of the Integrated MSc in Environmental Engineering and Director of the Doctoral Program in Environmental Engineering and more recently Executive Director of Ciência Viva Centre of Vila do Conde.