Pedro Neto is a Control and Automation Engineer from Maceió, Brazil, holding a bachelor’s degree from Universidade Federal de Pernambuco. With a strong focus on control systems, his expertise lies in microelectronics hardware and low-level programming. In 2024, Pedro joined Dr. Ali Emadi’s team to specialize in motor control, following five years of hands-on experience in the electric mobility industry.
Full Profile
In 2019 Pedro joined Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, one of the most reputed Brazilian universities. From early into his bachelor’s degree Pedro joined the Baja SAE team to start his career on automotive embedded systems. Through his first year, Pedro learned and developed the vehicle’s central units, alongside many of the car’s electronic projects. In his first nationwide competition, with over 70 teams competing, Pedro secured the best grade in the electronic system presentation.
Following that, Pedro was approached to work at Voltz Motors, the main electric motorbike company in Brazil at the time. Pedro was hired to start the research and development engineering team, working alongside worldwide suppliers, and developing embedded hardware and firmware for the main motorbike components. In this startup environment, Pedro was also responsible for the company’s connected ecosystems, creating the mobile app and the technical infrastructure to connect over 2000 electric bikes. The project’s success helped to secure a CAD 23 million investment.
After 3 years, Pedro was hired to work for North America’s Stellantis as a Software Quality Process Engineer. Pedro’s role was to develop the process which the automotive software would go through, using his expertise, to ensure zero defects in the car’s components. During that time, Pedro had to understand the whole company’s divisions, teams, responsibilities, and supplier structures to ensure the most optimized streamlined process to deliver the best software quality possible.
With the gained generalized expertise in the automotive industry, Pedro took the next career step joining CERC@MARC under Dr. Ali Emadi’s supervision as a Master’s student in 2024, envisioning focusing his automotive embedded systems experience in the motor’s controllers. His thesis and projects in MARC’s industry partnership allow Pedro to develop controllers for switched reluctance and permanent magnet synchronous machines. Pedro’s work involves using low-level programming, hardware-in-the-loop testing, and real-time control implementation to achieve his goals.
