MarioPereira  has a BSc degree in Electrical Engineering from PUC/Rio and MSc and DSc degrees in Systems Engineering (optimization) from COPPE/UFRJ - Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He is currently engaged in regulatory studies and the development of new methodologies and tools for risk management in competitive markets. Dr. Pereira has been a consultant to utilities, regulators and financial institutions in North America, Latin America, Europe and China, as well as multilateral institutions such as the Interamerican Development Bank and the World Bank. Previously he was a project manager at EPRI's PSPO program and a research coordinator at Cepel, the Brazilian Electric Power Research Center. While at Cepel, Dr. Pereira developed methodologies and software for expansion planning, reliability evaluation and hydrothermal scheduling tools, used by most Brazilian utilities. He was also a professor at the Electrical Engineering Dept. of PUC/Rio, where he developed research in large scale and stochastic optimization. Dr. Pereira has authored and co-authored about 200 papers and four textbooks, was a director of Brazil's Operations Research Society and one of the recipients of the Franz Edelman Award for Management Science Achievement, granted by ORSA/TIMS for his work on stochastic optimization applied to hydro scheduling. 

Frederico M. Gomes  has a BSc in Electrical Engineering and a postgraduate degree in economic engineering. He also attended the Advanced School in Power Systems Engineering, Westinghouse Electric Corporation. He joined PSRI in 1999, where he directs the areas of regulatory studies, load forecasting, distribution, power purchase agreements and modeling of asset sales and acquisition. He is also a principal consultant to Brazil’s Wholesale Energy Market (MAE) and National System Operator (ONS) on a wide range of regulatory and technical issues. Previously he was Assistant to the presidency of BNDES, Brazil’s Development Bank, where participated in the privatization process of several utilities, preparation of legal documents for the sector reform and elaboration of the initial contracts for the privatized utilities. Prior activities include: (a) Energy Coordinator for the Strategic Issues Secretariat of Brazil’s Presidency; (b) Assistant Director of Planning and Engineering of Eletrobras, where he coordinated the preparation of the sector’s long-term expansion plans and energy/technology evaluations, among other activities; (c) head of Eletrobras’ Market Department, where he was responsible for the power sector load forecasts; (d) head of Cepel’s System Department, where he coordinated the R&D groups responsible for the development of most computational models and methodologies used for expansion planning, hydrological modeling, reliability evaluation and operations scheduling used in the Brazil system; (e) director of Procom, a consulting firm that pioneereed the development of computational tools for system planning and operations in Brazil.

José Rosenblatt has a BSc degree in Electrical Engineering from PUC/Rio and a MSc degree in Operations Research from Stanford University. He also concluded an Executive MBA for the Power Sector at UFRJ's Economics Institute. He joined PSRI and its associated company, Mercados de Energia, in 2000. At PSRI, Mr. Rosenblatt is responsible for regulatory and market studies. He is also a principal consultant to Brazil's Wholesale Energy Market (MAE), National System Operator (ONS) and Regulatory Agency (ANEEL). Previously he worked at Eletrobrás, where he was involved with regulation, energy trading, project evaluation, generation expansion planning, and the development and implementation of both supply reliability criteria and of system simulation software. He also lectured at the Electrical Engineering and Industrial Engineering departments of PUC/Rio, and was an independent consultant for OLADE (Latin American Energy Development Organization).

Michael McCoy  received his BS in Engineering Physics from the University of Portland and his PhD in Applied Mathematics from Oregon State University. He is currently a Technical Director of PSRI, where he is engaged in strategic interconnection studies in the West Coast and in the development of methodologies for pricing financial instruments in electricity markets; he is also Vice-President for Research and Development for Becker Capital Management, where he is involved in the research of quantitative decision making under uncertainty and human behavior in competitive markets. Dr. McCoy was formerly the chairman of the Mathematics Department and Head of the Computer Center at the University of Portland, Head of the Power System Planning Branch of the Bonneville Power Administration, and a Project Manager in System Reliability for EPRI. 

Sérgio Granville  has BSc and MSc. degrees in Applied Mathematics from PUC/Rio and a PhD in Operations Research from Stanford University. He joined PSRI in 2000 and is currently engaged in risk management for energy markets and software development for power systems. Previously, he worked for ten years at Cepel, where he coordinated the development of models, methodologies and software for power system planning and operation, including Optimal Power Flow, VAr optimization programs and others for the Brazilian utilities, BPA (USA), BCHydro (Canada) and EPRI (USA). Previously, Dr. Granville was a consultant at the System Optimization Laboratory of Stanford University, where he developed optimization models for power systems. He also worked at IMPA/CNPq, where he was involved in teaching activities and in the development of large scale optimization models for economic planning. Since 1987 he has been a close associate to the UFRJ, where he supervises dissertations and develops research in the area of large-scale optimization. Dr. Granville has authored and co-authored more than 50 technical papers in the application of optimization techniques to power system planning and operations.

Bernardo M. Gomes  has BSc in Electrical Engineering from PUC/RIO and a MBA, with major in Finance and Statistics, from New York University. He joined PSRI in 1999, where he has been working in projects related to finance, such as pricing financial instruments, developing risk management tools and suggesting investment strategies in electricity markets. Previously he was responsible for risk management at Chase Manhattan and for derivatives trading and pricing at Deutsche Bank. 

Nora Campodónico has a BSc degree in Statistics from the Catholic University of  Lima, a MSc degree in Operations Research from the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics (IMPA) and a DSc degree in Systems Engineering (optimization) from COPPE/UFRJ, both in Rio de Janeiro. She joined PSRI in 1992, where she coordinates the development of software products in the areas of stochastic hydrothermal scheduling, power system planning under uncertainty and competition, reliability evaluation and optimal pricing. Previously she worked at Cepel, where she developed methodology and software in the areas of power system planning and operations. Dr. Campodónico has been an instructor in several PSRI international courses and has authored and co-authored several papers and reports in the areas of Var planning, non-linear programming, network flow applications, planning under uncertainty and hydrothermal scheduling. She is a member of the Brazilian Operations Research Society.

Luiz M. Thomé has a BSc in Electrical Engineering from UFRJ, and was awarded post-graduate credits in power system engineering from COPPE/UFRJ. He joined PSRI in 1997, where he directs network analysis software development and research on transmission tariffs and transmission planning issues. Previously Mr. Thomé managed the development of Cepel's network analysis software, used by most Brazilian utilities (AC power flow, contingency analysis, equivalent network, voltage sensitivity, electromechanical transient analysis and so forth). His responsibilities included software specification and definition of solution method, data structures and graphic user interface, as well as supervision of program implementation. He also managed several research projects in the power systems area, including collaborations with Dortmund University, EPRI, Wisconsin University, PUC-Rio and UFRJ. Prior to Cepel Mr. Thomé worked as a power system planning engineer at the LIGHT utility in Rio. 

Rafael Kelman has a B.Sc degree in Water Resources Engineering from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and a MSc degree in Operations Research (COPPE). He joined PSRI in 1997, where he has worked in several projects related to economic evaluation of hydro and thermal projects, strategic bidding, water pricing and allocation and transmission pricing. He has been working in the development of a short term scheduling model with unit commitment. He has also been working in the development of computer models for the application of financial instruments to the energy sector, including risk management and physical / financial optimization. Mr. Kelman has been an instructor of several PSRI courses in Europe, South America and the US. His research interests include water resources, stochastic optimization, planning under uncertainty and finance.

Laura Bahiense has a BSc degree in Computer Science, a MSc in Systems Engineering (Combinatorial Algorithms) and a DSc in Systems Engineering (Optimization), all from COPPE/UFRJ. She joined PSRI in 1999, where she is working on the development of software products related to Power Systems Optimization, especially in the areas of Transmission Expansion Planning and Network Transmission Pricing. Previously she worked at a joint LMF (Formal Methods laboratory at PUC-Rio) -Equitel-Siemens project where she developed a logical methodology and an optimization tool to control and optimize the production stage of new products. Her research interests include: Combinatorial Optimization, Integer Programming, Network Design, Steiner Problems, Bundle Methods, Extra-gradient Methods, Volume Algorithm, Stochastic Optimization, Planning under Uncertainty and Finance. Dr. Bahiense is a member of: the Mathematical Programming Society and the IEEE Power Engineering Society.

Gerson Couto Oliveira has a BSc degree in Electrical Engineering from PUC/Rio as well as MSc and DSc degrees in Computer Science and Systems Engineering from COPPE/UFRJ. He joined PSRI as an associate consultant in 1999, where he is currently involved with transmission planning models. He is also a professor at the Electrical Engineering Department of PUC-Rio. Previously he worked at CEPEL, the Brazilian electrical research center, where he was a project manager and senior researcher in the areas of optimization and statistical techniques applied to power systems planning and operations. His interests include: linear, nonlinear and integer programming, stochastic optimization, applied statistics, simulation, and power systems planning and operations.

Julio Simba has a B.Sc. degree in Software Engineering from the Central University of Ecuador, a MSc. degree in Systems Engineering (optimization) from COPPE/UFRJ. He joined PSRI in 2000, where he has coordinated the development of the GUIs (Graphic User Interfaces) used in all PSRI software. Mr. Simba has participated in the development of SUPER/OLADE, OSPE, SDDP, LITOM, and other. His research interests include financial optimization, nonlinear optimization using interior-point methods, computer aided design (CAD), object-oriented programs and relational databases.

Gustavo Voll joined PSRI in 1999 as a part-time software engineer. He has been involved in the development of graphical interfaces for planning and portfolio optimization models, network design, Web design, development of client-server applications and data conversion utilities for integration of computational models. Mr. Voll is working towards a BSc degree in Computer Science, with emphasis in System Analysis.

André Granville joined PSRI in 2000 as a software engineer. He is involved in the development of integrated data base management software for PSRI's computational models and a graphical interface for transmission network planning and transmission pricing. Previously he worked at CEPEL, where he was involved in the development of graphical interfaces with data base for hydrothermal scheduling applications. Mr. Granville is working towards a BSc degree in Computer Science, with emphasis in System Analysis.

Fernanda Thomé joined PSRI in 1999 as a part-time research assistant. She has been involved in the development of transmission expansion data bases using geographical information systems and graphical representation of transmission networks. Ms. Thome is working towards a degree in Electrical Engineering from UFRJ.

Julio Praça  has a BSc degree in electrical engineering from Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and a MSc degree (also in EE) from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He joined PSRI in 1995, where he coordinates generation-transmission studies, including the bid for Brazil-Argentina interconnection, opportunities for installing thermal generation, dimensioning of Var support, network reliability analysis and others. Mr. Praça was formerly the Head of Eletrobras' Transmission Planning Department, where he was the main coordinator of several nationwide and international transmission studies; development of new planning methodologies and criteria; establishment of marginal-cost based tariffs; design of technical solutions for Itaipu's AC, DC and hybrid systems. Prior to Eletrobrás, Mr.Praça was in charge of CHESF's Planning Division. 

M.Candida Lima  has a BSc degree in Electrical Engineering  from the Federal University of Juiz de Fora and a MSc degree in Systems Engineering (optimization) from COPPE/UFRJ. She joined  PSRI in 1994, where she has been working in system planning studies such as the Brazil-Argentina interconnection, evaluation of privatized generation companies and new generation projects as well as methodology studies such as the design of transmission tariffs for Colombia and the development of new production costing algorithms. Previously she worked at Cepel, where she developed computational tools for reactive power planning and optimal power flow. 

Maria de Luján Latorre has a BSc degree in Mathematics from UNR (Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Argentina), and her M.Sc. and PhD both in Systems Engineering and Computation - Optimization from COPPE/UFRJ. She joined to PSRI in 2001, where she is working on the development and study in Power Systems Optimization area. Previously, she worked at CEPEL (the Brazilian electrical research center), where she developed computational tools for optimal power flow. Her research interests included: non-linear optimization, power system optimization models, bi-level mathematical problems and analysis of market power in Electric Power Systems.

Luiz Augusto N. Barroso has a BSc in Mathematics and a MSc degree in Operations Research, both from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He joined PSRI in 1999, where he has been working in several projects related to hydro and thermal economic project evaluation, computational models to address hydrothermal scheduling and system planning studies. His research interests include market power, stochastic optimization and finance.

Priscila Lino has a BSc degree in Mathematics and is finishing her MSc in Operations Research, both from UFRJ. She joined PSRI in 2000, where she has been working in bid-based hydrothermal dispatch and system planning studies. Her research interests include water resources, stochastic optimization, planning under uncertainty and finance.