She is a professor at the Instituto Superior Técnico, the engineering school of the University of Lisbon.
She also headed the Energy Commission of the Portuguese National Research Agency from 1991 to 1994.
[2] She was the founder, in 1993, of the biennial International Conference on Power Systems Transients.
[3] Ward was named a Fellow of the IEEE in 2000, "for contribution to modeling and analysis of power systems transients".
[4] She became a Fellow (Membro Conselheiro) of Ordem dos Engenheiros in 2002,[2] was given a Technical Council Award for System Technical Performance by the International Council on Large Electric Systems (CIGRE) in 2008,[5] and is the 2014 winner of the Scientific Committee Award of the International Conference on Lightning Protection.