About Me

I am an Assistant Professor of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering at Missouri S&T. I joined S&T after obtaining my PhD in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from Penn State under the advisory of Dr. Christopher Griffin and Dr. Terry Friesz.

My PhD dissertation work lied in the intersection of Optimal Control and Machine Learning, where I proposed a Fourier-based multidimensional approximation for optimal control surfaces arising in the control of evolutionary games.

My research interests are in Operations Research, Applied Optimization and Optimal Control, Differential Games and Machine Learning in the context of industrial and management systems.

Before graduate school, I worked for the investment banking industry in Brazil, first in Mergers and Acquisitions and then as a Project Finance analyst. My bachelor’s degree is from the Federal University of São Carlos (Brazil), in Industrial Engineering (Engenharia de Produção). Also, during my undergraduate studies, I was a visiting undergraduate student at the North Dakota State University and, under the influence of Dr. Om Yadav, I decided to eventually return to the US for my graduate studies and pursue an academic career.

After spending my PhD years in State College, PA, I moved to Rolla, MO, home of Missouri S&T, where I live with my lovely wife Georgette (liaison librarian to the Kummer College at S&T) and our sweet, long haired mini dapple dachshund, Sophia.

Teaching

• Fall 2023, Fall 2024 | ENG MGT 5414 – Introduction to Operations Research, a senior level course for the Engineering Management major.
• Spring 2024 | ENG MGT 6415 (SYS ENG 6110) – Optimization under Uncertainty, a graduate level course.

Education

• 2023 – Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, The Pennsylvania State University
  • Minor in Electrical Engineering
• 2020 – M.S. in Industrial Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University
• 2017 – B.S. in Industrial Engineering, Universidade Federal de São Carlos

Prospective PhD Students

If you are interested in working with me, please consider applying to the graduate program in Engineering Management or Systems Engineering at S&T. You are free to send me an email with your credentials, but I won’t reply to all emails I receive (too many!). Those who have been accepted to our PhD program always get a reply! I receive numerous emails from prospective students and it is logistically infeasible for me to respond to each one of them with the level of detail they deserve. I do read all of my emails, so if you don’t receive a response, it most likely means we are not a good match. Sending me follow-ups with red exclamation marks or requesting a reply won’t convince me to reply to you (indeed, it may have the opposite effect). If a candidate stands out, I will invite them for a preliminary, laid-back conversation. If things go well, I will invite them to a second interview (but they still need to be admitted by the department). I appreciate your interest in becoming my student and good luck in your application process!

Kummer Fellowship

S&T offers, through the Kummer Institute, a highly disputed and prestigious Fellowship for exceptional doctoral students with an outstanding past academic performance. By design, 50% of the fellowships are exclusive to US permanent residents (citizens or Green Card holders). If you fall into this group, please contact me by email with the subject line “Potential Kummer Fellowship Applicant | US Permanent Resident”, and we can start from there. You are even more encouraged to apply for this Fellowship if you are an outstanding undergraduate student already at S&T. However, this is not a requirement. If you are not a US permanent resident, I will automatically consider you for this Fellowship once the steps described under the section “Prospective PhD Students” above have been followed. More information can be found here.

Open Closed Positions

The position described below has been already filled. Nonetheless, it describes more or less the type of student that I would like to work with. Currently, no funding is available, but it may become available as soon as Fall 2025.