Alejandro Bayas Fernandez was born in Barcelona in 1982. He graduated from the Escola Tècnica Superior d’Enginyers Industrials de Barcelona (ETSEIB) of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) in 2007 where he obtained the degree of Industrial Engineer with a specialization in Management. During his senior college year (2006-2007), he completed his Master’s Thesis at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich). His thesis was on the study of a Nonlinear Dynamical Model of the price of a Single Asset using mn filter calibration to develop a trading program of financial stocks. This entailed the study of a nonlinear model of the price of an asset; and Kalman filter calibration using real data to develop a trading program of financial stocks. He has also had experience in industry, with companies such as Alcan Packaging, where he worked as an industrial designer, and at CDEI, a center in charge of providing technological solutions in the field of industrial product and equipment design. The CDEI website is available at http://www.cdei.upc.edu/objectius.asp ; there he worked in the preparation of courses of the Mechanical Fabrication branch for the INEM (Spanish State Public Employment Sevice). In 2007, he was awarded a Balsells Fellowship to pursue graduate studies in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Irvine. His research interests are in Logistics systems analysis and design. He enjoys playing soccer, tennis, traveling, reading and making friends from all around the world.
Eva Maria Carreira was born in Bizkaia in 1978 and has lived in Barcelona since 1996. She graduated from the University of Barcelona (UB) in October 2005 with a degree in Chemical Engineering. In 2002 she trained in high-pressure die casting processes and CAE analysis working for CASTMOLD. Subsequently, she received additional training in CAE at APPLUS Technical Services in the thermoplastics injection molding process and structural analysis. In 2005, she became part of the lightweight alloys department at ASCAMM, where she developed considerable experience in technical assessment services related to the optimization of high pressure aluminum die casting and test mouldings. Additionally, she provided specialized technical training to companies in this sector. As a result of this experience, she was given the opportunity to take a course offered by Buhler Druckguss (Switzerland) on management, programming, and maintenance of pressure casting injectors. In 2007, she was awarded a Balsells Fellowship to pursue a Master of Science degree in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of California, Irvine. Her research interests are in prediction of materials life under fatigue and the development of coatings. She likes adventure sports and traveling.
Anna Díez Manjarrés was born in Barcelona in 1981. She graduated from the Escola Tècnica Superior de Telecomunicacions de Barcelona (ETSETB) at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) in 2007, obtaining a degree in Telecomunications Engineering. In 2006 she spent 9 months at the Signal and Image Processing Institute (SIPI) at University of Southern California (USC) developing her degree thesis. Her research was focused on the use of distributed source coding (DSC) for the compression of RGB images. In September 2007 she was awarded a Balsells Fellowship to pursue a Master’s in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). Her research interests are image processing and coding. She enjoys the astronomy, the crafts, travelling, listening to music and reading.
Sergi Perez Vazquez was born in Barcelona in 1980. He graduated from La Salle School of Telecommunication of Ramon Llull University in 2003 where he obtained the degree of Multimedia Engineer and in 2007 where he obtained the degree of Informatics Engineer. He has worked in different companies, as a Java and .NET programmer, including Raona Engineering and entrenador.net. In 2007, he was awarded a Balsells Fellowship to pursue a Doctor of Philosophy Degree in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of California, Irvine. His research interests are in Machine Learning and Theory of Control. He has trained in track and field since age 15 and enjoys reading almost everything.