Eduardo Louback received his B.S. in mechanical engineering with honours distinction from the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais (PUC-MG), Brazil, in 2019. He is currently a Ph.D. student at McMaster Automotive Resource Centre (MARC), Canada. His field of expertise is in vehicle performance and energy consumption. His research interest includes developing energy management strategies for battery electric vehicles, and driveability assessments, through driving simulators.
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Eduardo’s interest in learning mathematics and physics in school, narrowed his undergraduate options to the engineering area. Choosing mechanical engineering was a natural choice, thanks to his father, who always promoted Eduardo’s interest in cars.
His first international academic experience was in 2016 as a research assistant at the University of Washington, USA, after attending one academic year at the University of California, USA. His professional experience in the automotive industry began in 2018, as an FCA Brazil Performance and Fuel Consumption group intern. Eduardo applied his expertise to his undergraduate senior research project, which involved using the vehicle dynamics simulator from his home university (PUC Minas, 2013-2019).
His project received the award for best in his class, and it achieved two goals. The first achievement was implementing an enhanced automatic transmission model compared to the simulator’s existing one. The second, was proving the simulator’s capability as a tool for subjective driveability studies. Eduardo was able to confirm the latter goal using amateur and professional drivers’ feedback on the difference in the simulator’s performance, as a function of the gear-shifting maps. After graduating in 2019, Eduardo continued working for the same group at FCA.
The McMaster Automotive Resource Centre (MARC) had recently installed a similar driving simulator, and the program was interested in bringing on new students that had prior experience with this technology. Shortly after his graduation, they invited him to apply for McMaster’s Hybrid Powertrain program as a M.A.Sc. student. Eduardo joined Dr. Ali Emadi’s team in September 2020, and became a Ph.D. student a year later.
His research interests are related to the battery electric vehicle’s energy management control and driveability evaluation through driving simulation tests. In addition to his thesis work, he has collaborated with industry projects from Stellantis and CUBIC Transportation Systems.
