João André Pinto Soares

João André Pinto Soares is a Senior Researcher at the Knowledge Engineering and Decision Support Research Group (GECAD) at the Polytechnic Institute of Porto's School of Engineering. He earned his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from UTAD in 2017 and has since secured significant funding through FCT projects, including CENERGETIC as Principal Investigator and BENEFICE as co-PI.

• Principal Investigator for CENERGETIC project on energy resource management
• Co-PI for BENEFICE project on smart building optimization
• Visiting Professor at Centrale Lille since 2019
• Co-coordinator of SAtCOMM project for sustainable Atlantic energy communities

Dr. Soares has established international collaborations with institutions including Sao Paulo State University (UNESP), Honda Research Institute Europe, and Centrale Lille. His research focuses on energy resource management in smart grids, with particular emphasis on local energy markets and electric vehicles. He has successfully managed a team of 10 researchers over the last 5 years and supervised numerous students at various academic levels.

His publication record includes over 200 scientific articles, with 75 in international journals, garnering more than 5500 citations and an h-index of 40. His most recent work demonstrates strong trends in applying advanced optimization techniques, machine learning, and metaheuristics to energy resource management problems, particularly focusing on uncertainty modeling, electric vehicle integration, and local energy markets.

• Chair of IEEE ISATC Task Force on Computational Intelligence for the Energy Domain
• Secretary of the IEEE PES Intelligent Systems Subcommittee
• Launched 16 special issue editions as co-editor in JCR journals
• Reviewed over 400 scientific papers

Dr. Soares has supervised 9 PhD students (7 ongoing), 23 MSc students, and 23 BSc students. His research has been supported by 28 national/international projects (10 as PI, 2 as Co-PI, and 17 as researcher), including Horizon/H2020 projects. He has also been instrumental in organizing over 30 scientific events and has delivered more than 30 invited talks at international conferences.