Marcelo Godoy Simões is a Brazilian-American scientist engineer, professor in Electrical Engineering in Flexible and Smart Power Systems, at the University of Vaasa. He was with Colorado School of Mines, in Golden, Colorado, for almost 21 years, where he is a Professor Emeritus. He was elevated to Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for applications of artificial intelligence in control of power electronics systems.
Early life and career
Simões was born in São Paulo, Brazil in 1963, to José L.G. Simões and Cecília A.B.G. Simões, with a sister, Maysa A.G. Simões. When he was 11 years old, he had a strong motivation and decided to become an electrical engineer when his cousin, Hélio Adauto de Paula, showed him vacuum tube radios, transistorized audio amplifiers, and took Simões to visit his work as an electrical machine designer in Equacional, a motor manufacturing company in the city of São Paulo.
Simões was enrolled in an evening Catholic high school from 1978 to 1980, "Liceu Coração de Jesus", where he learned electronics as part of a technician degree. At that time, there was a job market for electronic technicians in Brazil, but he wanted to study further, and become an engineer. Therefore, in 1980, Simões took the entrance exams (FUVEST) for the University of São Paulo (USP) and was admitted as a student in "Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo (EPUSP)". He completed his B.Sc. degree in 1985. In 1982 he was admitted to the Electrical Engineering Department of EPUSP and started an internship at FDTE - Fundação para o Desenvolvimento Tecnológico da Engenharia. From 1984 to 1985, he focused his expertise in telecommunications, antennas, high frequency, analog, and digital circuits design. His Senior Design in 1985 was a modem with analog and digital circuits implemented for interfacing an 8085 microprocessor, operating on a regular telephone connection. Such a system was made before the age of computers connected on telephone lines via modems. During his four years internship for FDTE, he was learning with senior engineers how to design DC-DC converters and off-line switching mode power supplies, using Phillips manuals for TV flyback circuits and National Instruments handbooks. Those power converters were built and implemented in railroad automation (FEPASA), as well as in the São Paulo Metro subway system. In 1985 Simões graduated from EPUSP and worked as an engineer for a few years with FDTE. He was inspired by several faculty from EPUSP, for example, Prof. who taught him modern computer-based electrical and electronics circuits analysis (that time with mainframes, and later on MAC's and PC's), José Roberto Cardoso who taught electrical machines and energy conversion. Simões also learned a lot from Prof. Edson Benedicto Ramos Féris and Prof. Guido Stolfi techniques for analog high-frequency circuit designer. During the Senior year (1985) Simões attended a course from Prof. Waldir Pó on introduction to Power Electronics, where the principles of utilizing thyristors, diodes, and transistors, to control electrical circuits for energy conversion was a transformation in how Simões wanted to further his career, giving him a strong motivation to learn and understand power electronics for controlling machines, ac-dc, dc-ac, and dc-dc power conversion.