Dr. Rafael E. Vásquez received a B.S. in Mechanical
Engineering in 2002, and an M.Sc. in Engineering with an emphasis in Automation
in 2007, both from the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (UPB), Medellin,
Colombia. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University
of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA in 2011, with a Fulbright Scholarship. Rafael
is currently a Full Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at
UPB, in the area of dynamics, systems, and control. His research interests include
robotics, marine systems, ocean sciences and technologies, navigation,
guidance, and control of unmanned vehicles, vibrations, machine monitoring,
machine learning and intelligent systems, advanced manufacturing, process
control, engineering design, renewable energies, sustainable development, and
engineering education. He has been a member of the American Society of
Mechanical Engineers (ASME) since 2005, and a member of the technical
committees in Marine Systems and Plant Manufacturing control of the International
Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) since 2017 and 2023, respectively.
