Max Mauro Dias Santos
ORCID: 0000-0001-7877-3554
Associate Professor and Department Chair
Director at Automotive System Group
Department of Electronics
Federal Technological University of Paraná – Ponta Grossa
maxsantos@utfpr.edu.br

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Biography

Max Mauro Dias Santos is an internationally recognized researcher, scholarly leader, and engineer with over than 29 years of experience spanning electrical engineering, embedded and cyber-physical systems, intelligent transportation, and automotive innovation. His career uniquely bridges fundamental engineering research with the real-world deployment of safety-critical and industrial-grade technologies, contributing directly to the advancement of autonomous, electrified, connected, and cybersecure mobility systems.

He is currently an Associate Professor and Chair of Department of Electronics at the Federal Technological University of Paraná – Ponta Grossa (UTFPR-PG), Brazil, where he is in charge of scholarly governance, strategic planning, infrastructure development, and the coordination of multidisciplinary research programs. He is the founder and director of the Automotive Systems Group (GSA – 2014-current) and the Real-Time Systems Laboratory (LTR – 2002-2009), two internationally visible research hubs that integrate the design, development, and testing of embedded software, AI-driven functions, system engineering, validation workflows, and industrial standards for intelligent mobility, automotive, and cyber-physical systems..

Dr. Dias Santos holds a B.E. in Electrical Engineering (1993) from ICMG, an M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering (1996) from UFSC, and a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering (2004) from the UFSC. He has been a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Aveiro, Portugal, in distributed control systems and has held visiting and research appointments in Canada, France, and Portugal, including a recent appointment as Visiting Professor in Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto (2023–2024), where he contributed to graduate studies and collaborative research in cybersecurity and intelligent transportation systems.

Throughout his career, he has secured and managed more than USD 4.3 million in competitive research funding, leading large-scale, multi-institutional projects supported by national innovation programs and industry. His work has been conducted in close collaboration with global OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers, including Volvo, Renault, Stellantis, DAF Trucks, Bosch, Vector Informatik, AVL, and IBM, resulting in deployable engineering solutions, improved ADAS validation workflows, strengthened automotive cybersecurity, and accelerated technology transfer from academia to industry.

Before returning full-time to academia, Dr. Dias Santos held senior engineering positions at Volvo, General Motors, and IBM, working on powertrain control, safety-critical embedded systems, automation, and large-scale computing platforms. This industrial background strongly shapes his research philosophy: innovation must be system-aware, standards-aligned, certifiable, and ready for deployment.

His research contributions span automotive embedded systems, ADAS and autonomous driving, electrified vehicles, model-based design, AI-enabled control, cybersecurity for CASE systems, intelligent transportation systems, and energy-aware autonomy. He is the author or co-author of over 60 peer-reviewed journal articles, 80+ refereed conference papers, books and book chapters, and patents, with publications in leading venues such as IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, IEEE Access, Sensors, Computers & Security, and Vehicular Communications.

Equally central to his career is capacity building and workforce development. He has supervised and co-supervised more than 20 graduate students (MSc and PhD), mentored 50+ undergraduate capstone projects, and delivered over 400 professional and executive-level training courses, directly upskilling more than 2,000 engineers and technical leaders from industry, utilities, and public institutions in areas such as automotive embedded systems, ADAS, electrification, AI, cybersecurity, and validation.

Looking forward, Dr. Dias Santos’s vision is to establish and scale globally connected research ecosystems focused on embedded AI, cyber-physical security, and intelligent, energy-aware mobility, aligned with clean technology, public safety, and long-term societal impact. His work reflects a sustained commitment to technical excellence, responsible innovation, industrial relevance, and the training of highly qualified personnel, positioning him as a leading figure in the future of intelligent transportation and autonomous systems.

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