FACULTY STAFF
CALVENTE-CALVO, JAVIER received the Ingeniero de Telecomunicación degree and the Ph.D. degree from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain, in 1994 and 2001, respectively.
He was a visiting scholar with Alcatel Space Industries, Toulouse, France, in 1998. He is currently an Associate Professor with the Departament d'Enginyeria Electrònica, Elèctrica i Automàtica, Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), Tarragona, Spain, where he is working in the fields of power electronics and control systems.
CANTÓ, ENRIC obtained his M.S. in Electronics Enginering in 1995 and his Ph.D in 2001 at the Universidad Politécnica de Catalunya (UPC). He has been associate professor since 1996 in the UPC, and assistant professor in the Universitat Rovira i Virgili since 2003.
Enrique has participated in several National and International research projects related to smart-cards, FPGAs and biometrics. He has published many research papers in journals and conferences. His research interests include hardware accelerators for biometrics algorithms and run-time reconfigurable embedded systems.
CID-PASTOR, ANGEL graduated as Ingeniero en Electrónica Industrial in 1999 and as Ingeniero en Automática y Electrónica Industrial in 2002 at Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain. He received the M.S. degree in design of microelectronics and microsystems circuits in 2003 from Institut National des Sciences Appliquées, Toulouse, France.
He received the Ph.D. degree from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain, and from Institut National des Sciences Appliquées, LAAS-CNRS Toulouse, France in 2005 and 2006, respectively. He is currently an associated professor at the Departament d'Enginyeria Electrònica, Elèctrica i Automàtica, Escola Tècnica Superior d'Enginyeria, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain. His research interests are in the field of power electronics and renewable energy systems.
EL AROUDI, ABDELALI was born in 1973. He received the graduate degree in Physical Science from Faculté des Sciences, Université Abdelmalek Essaadi, Tetouan, Morocco, in 1995, and the Ph.D. degree (with honors) from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain in 2000.
During the period 1999-2001 he was a Visiting Professor at the Department of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Automatic Control, Technical School of Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), Tarragona, Spain, where he became an associate professor in 2001 and a full-time tenure Associate Professor in 2005. From September 2007 to January 2008 he was holding a visiting scholarship at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Manizales, conducting research on modeling of Power Electronics circuits for Energy Management. From February 2008 to July 2008, he was a visiting scholar at the Centre de Recherche en Sciences et Technologies de Communications et de l'Informations (CReSTIC), Reims, France. His research interests are in the field of structure and control of power conditioning systems for autonomous systems, power factor correction, stability problems, nonlinear phenomena, chaotic dynamics, bifurcations and control of switching converters. He has co-authored with co-workers from different universities in Europe, Asia, Africa and America more than 150 international scientific publications and 1 book chapter. He has been involved in different national, and bilateral cooperation projects within his research interests including the areas of control and dynamics of energy management circuits. He has given different invited lectures in Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia. He has participated in Evaluation Boards for research proposals in Europe (Spain, Romania). He is the 2013-2015 Secretary of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Technical Committee of Power and Energy Circuit and Systems (PECAS). He is the co-editor of a special issue on: Design of Energy-Efficient Distributed Power Generation Systems. He has co-organized special sessions related to dynamics and control of switching converters and energy harvesting systems in IEEE ICIT 2003, Maribor, Slovenija, ELECTRIMACS 2005, Hammamet, Tunisia, EPE-PEMC 2006, Portoroz, Slovnija, SSD 2009, Djerba, Tunisia, SSD 2013, Hammamet, Tunisia, NOLTA 2014, Majorca, SPAIN, IEEE ISCAS 2013, Beijing, China, IECON 2013, Vienna, CNSDD 2014, Agadir, Morocco, IEEE ISCAS 2014, Melbourne, Australia, NOLTA 2014, Luzern, Switzerland. He was a track chair of LASCAS 2013 and IEEE ISCAS 2013. He is member of the Scientific Committee of the CNSDD2014, Agadir, May 2014. He is Member of the Scientific Committee of the International Conference on Power Electronics and their Applications, Djelfa, Algeria, Member of the steering committee of Seminar on Automation, Instrumentation and Automatic Control, SAAEI, Co-Chair of the 21st edition of Seminar on Automation, Instrumentation and Automatic Control, SAAEI 2014, Tangier, Morocco, Member of the steering committee of International Conference on Nonlinear Structural Dynamics and Diagnosis, 2014, Agadir, Morocco, member of the steering committee of International Conference on Applied Automation and Industrial Diagnostic, ICAADI 2015 Algeria. He is serving as an Associate Editor of the IEE IET Power Electronics (2014-2017), Journal of Modeling and Simulations (2012-to date), associate editor of International Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy (2014-2017). He has supervised 5 PhD thesis completed, 1 on-going PhD student, 10 MSc's thesis students completed. His publications have near 1000 citations and an h-index of 20 according to Google Scholar.
GIRAL-CASTILLÓN, ROBERTO received the B.S. degree in Ingenieria Técnica de Telecomunicación, the M.S. degree in Ingenieria de Telecomunicación, and the Ph.D. (with honors) degree from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain, in 1991, 1994, and 1999, respectively.
From 1992 to 2000 he was Assistant Professor and from 2000 to 2019 Associate Professor with the Departament d'Enginyeria Electrònica, Elèctrica i Automàtica (DEEEA), Escola Tècnica Superior d'Enginyeria (ETSE), Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), Tarragona, Spain, where he is Full Professor since 2019. From 2000 to 2003 he was secretary of the DEEEA. He was academic coordinator of the doctoral program in Technologies for Nanosystems, Bioengineering and Energy of the URV from Oct. 2012 to Jan. 2015. From Jan 2015 to Jun 2018 he was the URV Rector's Delegate for ICTs. Since Feb. 2020 he is the academic coordinator of the Master's Degree in Industrial Engineering of the URV. He has co-supervised five doctoral thesis.
His research focuses in the field of power electronics and, in particular, in the design and control of AC/DC and DC/DC converters in DC power buses for automotive applications and for distributed renewable generation systems. He is investigating solutions to seamlessly integrate power supplies such as PV modules with MPPT and current-slope-limited PEMFCs, storage devices like batteries and large capacitors, and pulsating loads. Other important subjects in his research are the parallel-interleaved connection of current- controlled converters, the integrated design of switching power stages and their controllers to achieve the desired closed loop dynamics without subharmonic or chaotic instabilities, and the power regulators design by means of sliding mode and input-output linearization techniques and subsequent implementation of their controllers either in analog, digital or hybrid ways.
As a researcher of the GAEI (Automatic Control and Industrial Electronics Group of the URV) he has participated in several private and public R&D projects, being the main researcher at three of the projects supported by the Spanish Government. He is currently director of the GAEI. In 2010 he was elevated to senior member of the IEEE, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. As a member of the IEEE Industrial Electronics and Power Electronics Societies, he collaborates regularly as a reviewer in their journals and conferences, in which he has also coauthored most of his scientific contributions.
GONZÁLEZ-MOLINA, FRANCISCO was born in Barcelona, Spain. He received the graduate degree Ingeniero Industrial and Doctor Ingeniero Industrial from the Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña, Spain, in 1996 and 2001, respectively.
He has over nine years of experience Research and development projects related to cables / lines areas, and processors on at prestigious universities (Spain, USA, Norway). Awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship (Fulbright) to work in USA. In addition, he spent four years as corporate director for business development for The Sewedy Cables, one of cable manufacturers and major electrical equipment to worldwide.
Currently, Francisco is Professor Reader in the Departamento de Ingeniería Electrónica, Eléctrica y Automática, Universidad Rovira i Virgili.
LOPEZ-SANTOS, OSWALDO received the electronics engineer degree from the Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas in Bogotá - Colombia in 2002, the master degree on industrial automation from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá - Colombia in 2011, and the PhD degree from the Institute National des Sciencies Apliquées (INSA), Toulouse - France in 2015, developing his research project at the Laboratory of Architecture and Systems Analysis of the National Agency for Scientific Research (LAAS-CNRS). Currently, he is a postdoctoral researcher associated to the Automatic Control and Industrial Electronics Group of the URV (GAEI).
OLALLA, CARLOS obtained the M.S. degree in industrial electronics and automatic control engineering from Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain, in 2004, and the Ph.D degree in advanced automatic control from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain, in 2009, for his work on robust linear control of power converters, carried out in the GAEI research group of Universitat Rovira i Virgili. In 2007 and 2009, he was a visiting scholar at the Laboratoire d'Analyse et d'Architecture des Systèmes (LAAS-CNRS), Toulouse, France, where he also held a postdoctoral position until March 2010. From 2010 to 2012 he was a visiting scholar and a research associate in the Colorado Power Electronics Center (CoPEC), University of Colorado, Boulder, USA. Since 2013, he has been a research associate with the Dept. of Electrical, Electronics and Automatic Control Engineering, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, where he works on modeling, optimization and robust control synthesis methods for power converters and renewable energy systems.
VALDERRAMA-BLAVI, HUGO received the Ingeniero de Telecomunicación (Ms degree) and the PhD. degree from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain, in 1994 and 2001, respectively.
In 2001 he got a post-doctoral position at the LAAS-CNRS (Laboratoire d'Analyse et Architecture des Systèmes of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) of Toulouse, France where he remained for one year.
Since 2003 he is a Associate Professor with the Department of Electrical, Electronics, and Automatic Control Engineering (DEEEA) of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain. From 2018 until February 2022 he has been the academic responsible of the master of electric vehicle technologies. From then, he is the director of the electronic engineering and automatic control department (DEEEA). From 2003 until now, he has been the main researcher (IP) of 5 research projects financed by the Spanish ministry of science and technologies, he has co-authored more than 40 journal-papers, and has got the full professor accreditation from ANECA since June 2022.
He is working interests are: power electronics for renewable energy and distributed generation systems, efficient lighting, high voltage gain conversion, applications for silicon carbide devices, nonlinear control for power converters, active stabilization networks based on Loss Free Resistor (LFR), multifrequency AC-buses, and fast chargers and battery modeling for electrical vehicles.
VIDAL-IDIARTE, ENRIC received the Licenciado en Informatica degree and the Ph.D. degree from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain, in 1993 and 2001, respectively.
He is currently an Associate Professor with the Department of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Automatic Control (DEEEA), Technical School of Engineering (ETSE), Rovira i Virgili University (URV), Tarragona, Spain, where he is working in the field of digital and robust control of power converters and in power electronics systems applied to electric vehicles.
GARCÍA-ELVIRA, DAVID received the degree in industrial engineering, specializing in electrical engineering from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), Madrid, in 2009, the master's degree in renewable energies and energy efficiency from the Universidad de Castilla La Mancha (UCLM), Albacete, in 2012, the master's degree in teaching for secondary studies, professional education and languages from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), in 2022, and the PhD from the URV, in 2021. At the same time, he has studied philosophy at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), which is pending completion.
He is currently a Visiting Professor at the Department of Electrical, Electronic and Automatic Engineering at the URV. His research interests include analyzing, modeling and controlling batteries and their integration into electric vehicles and in renewable energy systems such as microgrids.
SEBASTIA-RULLO, MAX received the B.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering and in Industrial Electronics and Automation Engineering, as well as the M.Eng. degree in Electric Vehicle Technologies, from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Spain, in 2020 and 2021. He joined the
Automatic Control and Industrial Electronics Research Group (GAEI) as a Research Technician in 2021 and completed his Ph.D. with the same group in 2025. He then carried out a postdoctoral research stay at the Laboratory for Power Electronics within the Institute of Robotics at the University of Maribor, Slovenia, where he focused on digital control techniques based on FPGA implementation. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili. His research interests include DC-DC converters, power converter stabilization, and renewable energy systems.
ZAMBRANO-PRADA, DAVID ALEJANDRO has been a Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical, Electronic, and Automatic Engineering at Universitat Rovira i Virgili since May 2025.
He obtained his degree in Electronic Engineering and his master's degree in Control Engineering from the Universidad de Ibagué, Colombia, in 2014 and 2019, respectively. In 2023, he obtained his PhD from the URV.
In teaching, he gives classes related to renewable energy, power electronics, and robotics. Some of his research interests include advanced control methods, power conversion, electric vehicles and, microgrids and smart energy management.