Abel is from Porto in Portugal and is the ESR based at Cinergia in Barcelona.  He studied Electrical and Computing Engineering to Masters level at the University of Porto. During his studies, he specialized in power electronics, with a particular focus on areas such as motion control, artificial intelligence and control theory. During the final year of his Masters programme, he taught C programming to first year students.

His Masters dissertation on Wind Energy Generation Systems focused on the architectures of grid connection of three-phase PMSM-based wind systems and led him to study two VSC based systems connected in a back-to-back topology with a shared DC-link bus. His thesis work gave him considerable experience of development of models, design of controllers and testing using  Simulink/PowerSim. Since completing his studies,  he has worked on power systems controlled by the FPGA Spartan 3E500 from Xilinx.

Before joining the MEDOW network, Abel had been working as part of the research team at the University of Porto since September 2011. He worked on a project aiming to create a hybrid energy generating system with PV and wind power sources with storage devices to reduce power intermittence in the grid therefore increasing power quality. He had responsibility for developing all the necessary hardware and software tools in order to control the wind power generation, managing the DC link integration of PV and storage devices and the grid power flow control. In addition to his research work, Abel furthered his learning with courses on power electronics, signal processing, operational research and renewable sources and lectured on an Industrial Electronics course for Masters students.

Abel is looking forward to the personal and professional challenges that joining the MEDOW project will provide.  Moving to Spain will give him wide range of opportunities like learning a new language, experiencing a new culture and making new friends. From a professional point of view,  MEDOW is a collaboration between eleven international universities and companies which will allow him to learn new and complementary topics and to work with expert professionals in the fields of HVDC and power electronics.

Abel enjoys spending time with friends, bring outdoors and running, in which he competes in competitions.