He received his Ph.D. in 2000 from Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal, and a Masters degree in 1997 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA, having spent most of his doctoral studies at the Illinois Genetic Algorithms Laboratory (IlliGAL). He has made important contributions to Estimation of Distribution Algorithms (EDAs) and to automated parameter selection techniques for genetic and evolutionary algorithms, having co-edited a book in that topic, "Parameter Setting in Evolutionary Algorithms".