FACULTY STAFF
José Antonio Barrado Rodrigo received the electronic engineering degree from the Universitat de Barcelona (UB), Spain, in 2000 and the Ph.D. degree in automatic control from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain, in 2008.
He is currently an Associate Professor with the Department of Electronic Engineering and Automatic Control of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain. His research interests include analysis, modeling and control of electric generators and power converters applied to renewable energy systems.
Javier Calvente 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.
Enrique Cantó 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.
Angel Cid-Pastor 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.
Abdelali El Aroudi 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.
Roberto Giral 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.
Francisco González Molina 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.
Luis Guasch was born in Tarragona, Spain, in 1964. He received the B.S. degree in industrial engineering and the Ph.D. degree in engineering from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain, in 1996 and 2006, respectively. Currently, he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electronic, Electrical, and Automatic Engineering, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, where he has been since 1990.
His research interests are electric machines and power system quality.
Luis Martínez-Salamero received the Ingeniero de Telecomunicación degree in 1978 and the Ph.D. degree in 1984, both at the Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña, Barcelona, Spain.
From 1978 to 1992, he taught circuit theory, analog electronics and power processing at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros de Telecomunicación de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain. From 1992 to 1993, he was a visiting professor at the Center for Solid State Power Conditioning and Control, Department of Electrical Engineering, Duke University, Durham, NC. From 2003 to 2004 , 2010 to 2011, and March-September 2018 he was a visiting scholar at the Laboratory of Architecture and Systems Analysis (LAAS), National Agency for Scientific Research (CNRS), Toulouse, France. Since 1995 he has been a full professor with the Department of Electrical Electronic and Automatic Control Engineering , School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rovira i Virgili University , Tarragona, Spain, where he managed the Research Group in Automatic Control and Industrial Electronics (GAEI) in the period 1998-2018. His research interests include structure and control of power conditioning systems, namely, electrical architecture of satellites and electric vehicles, as well as nonlinear control of converters and drives, and power conditioning for renewable energy.
Dr. Martínez-Salamero has published a large number of papers in scientific journals and conference proceedings in the fields of modelling, simulation, and control of power converters, and holds a U.S. patent on dual voltage electrical distribution in vehicles. He was guest editor of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems Special Issue on Simulation, Theory and Design of Switched-Analog Networks (Aug. 1997). He organized in cooperation with the European Space Agency (ESA) the 5th European Space Power Conference (ESPC-98) in Tarragona and served during two terms (1996-2002) as a dean of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering . He was president of Spanish Joint Chapter of the IEEE Power Electronics and Industrial Electronics Societies from 2005 to 2008 , and distinguished lecturer of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society in the period 2001-2002. He is currently distinguished professor of Rovira i Virgili University.
Carlos Olalla 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.
H. Valderrama-Blavi 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.
Enric Vidal-Idiarte 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.
David García Elvira 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.