Speakers

[Updated Proposals 20.09.22]


Carlos Vila has been involved with Transformers, both in Operations & Standards, for more than 10 years, being Head of Transformer Standards and Maintenance in i-DE, Networks Business in Iberdrola in Spain, until March 2021. Since then, he leads the Operational Excellence area in Iberdrola, a global team focused on supporting locally the Network Businesses in Spain, UK, Brazil and US.
Carlos Vila received his M.Sc. in Industrial engineering from Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, Spain. After 3 years working as business consultant in different sectors, He joined Iberdrola in 2010. First, Carlos joined Asset Management Department in Scottish Power Networks in the UK, in multiple transformer projects including Distribution, Transmission and HVDC, to then moved to Iberdrola in Spain in 2015 to the position mentioned above. Carlos is currently representing Spain as member of the Study Committee of CIGRE A2 ¨Power Transformers and Reactors”, participating in the recently concluded CIGRE WG A2.55 about Life Extension. Carlos has also participated as speaker in several transformer international conferences and colloquiums, as Eurotechcon, CIGRE, TTS, ARWtr and others.




Mário André Soares is graduated in electrical engineering at the University of Oporto in 2000. Since 2000 he has been working at Rede Eléctrica Nacional (REN), Portugal, as an engineer in the Operation and Maintenance Division. Since 2004, he has worked in the Substation Maintenance and Asset Engineering departments, where he develops technical specifications and project management activities for maintenance, inspection, testing, monitoring and refurbishment work on the HV substations and their equipment. He is specially dedicated to all activities related to the lifecycle management of power transformers, from technical specification, testing, maintenance, testing, condition assessment, data management and lifecycle management of power transformers. He has participated in the Cigre workgroup dedicated to Transformer Intelligent Condition Monitoring.



Miguel Martínez is head of Transformer Standards and Maintenance in i-DE, which covers the Networks Business in Iberdrola Group in Spain. His activity has always been focused on transformers either at Iberdrola Networks or Iberdrola Renewables.
Miguel received the B.Sc, M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering, from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), Spain, in 2006, 2011, and 2021 respectively. He also obtained the M.Sc. degree in Electrical, Electronics and Automatic Engineering, and the M.Sc. degree in Organization and Logistics Engineering from the same University in 2011 and 2012 respectively.




Ricardo Vazquez received the B.Sc degree in Energies, from University of Vigo in 2014, and the M.Sc degree in Renewable Energies and Power Systems Management from City University of London in 2017. Since then, he has joined the UK Transmission and System Operator (National Grid) in 2017 as a Graduate HVDC Engineer, supporting the Operations and Maintenance team at the England-France 2000MW bipolar interconnector IFA1. Since 2019, he has supported building the new England-France 1000MW monopolar interconnector IFA2, where he stayed until 2021 beyond commissioning performing as Operations & Maintenance Supervisor based at the Daedalus Converter Station (Hampshire). Recently joined the Spanish TSO (Redeia - former Red Eléctrica de España) as Project Engineer working with the Construction Department involved on the new build Gulf of Biscay 2000MW bipolar interconnector INELFE and the first STATCOM in Vitoria.




Miguel Cuesto was born in Huelva, Spain, in 1978. He graduated as MSc Industrial Engineer at the Technical School of the University of Sevilla. He joined ABB in 2005 as transformer electrical designer, moving later to local Technology and R&D projects and later took several Technology Management positions, being now the Global Technology Manager for Power Transformers within Hitachi Energy.
Miguel is currently chair of Spanish National Committee for Transformers IEC CLC/TC 14 and has contributed to different working groups and published more than 30 technical papers including Cigre and ARWtr conferences.




Xavier Kestelyn (Member, IEEE) was born in Dunkirk, France, in 1971. He received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Lille, France, in 2003. After ten years as a teacher of electrical engineering in high school, he was an Associate Professor for ten years and is currently a Full Professor of electrical engineering at Arts et Métiers Institute of technology, France. From 2017 to 2022, he served as Vice-President for Academic and Student Affairs of Arts et Métiers Institute of Technology and focused research activities on developing methods to analyze emerging grids with a high penetration of power electronics subsystems. Xavier is now working on developing the hybrid twin concept for power grid asset management.




Guillaume Denis holds an engineering degree from MINES ParisTech, and a M.Sc. in Energy Physics from ENS Paris-Saclay France. He received a Ph.D. in Electrical Eng. in 2017. From 2017 to 2021, Guillaume was joined at the R&D department of RTE, the French TSO. He is now leading R&D activities on supervision and shot-term asset management.








Dieter Braisch received his Dipl.-Ing. degree in Electrical Engineering in 1999 from the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. Until 2006 he was scientific assistant at the Institute of Electrical Power Systems at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg and received the Ph.D. degree in 2010.
From 2006 to 2015 he worked in national and international projects as technical consultant at Siemens AG, Power Technologies International in Erlangen, Germany. Since 2015 he is research associate at the Institute of Electrical Energy Systems at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. His research areas are high voltage and high current components in the testing laboratory at the institute.




Ahmed Gamil received his B.Sc. degree from Zagazig University, Egypt in 1999 (Electrical Machines) and his M.Sc. degree from RWTH Aachen, Germany in 2004 (High Voltage Technology). Ahmed worked previously at University of Erlangen (FAU, EES) as scientific research assistance for the development of differential protection systems before joining SGB-SMIT Group. In 2010 he joined SGB in Regensburg, the headquarter of SGB-SMIT Group, with the aim of building the R&D Department from a technology and management point of view. In the last years as head of R&D, he contributed by different publications to transformer design optimization through improvements in losses, noise, thermal performance, and dielectric behaviour of power transformers including differnt application of alternative insulation liquids. His jorney at SGB ends in Oct. 2022 to start a new one at Hitachi Energy as "Domain Expert for Alternative Liquids" from Nov. 2022. His novel approach to determining the average oil temperature rise (G-Approach) was one of the reasons for his nomination in "IEC Call for Experts" as a member of MT 60076-2 for the revision of IEC 60076-2-2011. Ahmed is nominated to be one of the authors of a new CIGRE Green Book for "Transformer Life Management".




Diego M. Robalino is the Global Industry Director – Power Transformers at Megger®. He specializes in the diagnosis of complex electrical testing procedures and the strategic development of state-of-theart transformer testing technology. He has over 20 years of involvement in the electrical engineering profession with management responsibilities in the power systems, oil and gas, and research arenas. Diego is a Senior Member of IEEE, a member of the IEEE/PES Transformers Committee, a certified Project Management Professional with the Project Management Institute (PMI), an active member of CIGRE working groups, and the General Chairman for the IEEE/DEIS 2020 and 2022 Electrical Insulation Conference. He is the author and co-author of over 40 technical articles related to power, distribution, and instrument transformer condition assessment. Diego received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Tennessee Technological University while researching power system optimization with a focus on aging equipment.




Enrique Betancourt-Ramirez is currently Technical Manager for Prolec GE Internacional. His responsibilities include the technology transfer process between manufacturing plants, standardization and technical publications, solution of process and field events and leadership of advanced, applied technology projects. Enrique earned a Degree equivalent to a Master in Electric Power Engineering from the RWTH-Aachen, in 1988. Since 1989, he has developed innovations and design tools for power and distribution transformers. Enrique is active member of the IEEE PES Transformers Committee and of CIGRE SC A2. He is co-developer of several patents on behalf of Prolec GE and has published several scientific and technical articles in different industry forums. From 1994 through 2012 Enrique taught High Voltage Engineering and Electromagnetic Transients Simulation courses at the Graduate School of FIME-UANL; he has been also responsible for planning and organization of several domestic and international Transformer’s Technology Seminars offered by Prolec GE.



Inge Madshaven received his B.Sc. in Mechatronics from University of Agder in 2007 and worked with mechanical equipment for the offshore industry until 2011. He thereafter received the M.Sc. in Applied Physics and Ph.D. in Chemistry from Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the latter in 2020. His M.Sc. and Ph.D. theses on modelling and simulation of electrical breakdown in liquids were conducted in a collaboration with SINTEF Energy Research, where he currently holds a position as a Researcher in the department for Electric Power Technology.





Attila Gyore has a PhD from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BUTE), with a focus on superconducting transformers. For 10 years he was an Assistant Professor at the Department of Electric Power Engineering at BUTE, and from 2011 he worked with CG Hungary as an active part design engineer of power transformers. Attila joined M&I Materials in 2012 as a senior application engineer, where he is an expert in the applications of natural and synthetic ester liquids and retrofilling of transformers.
Attila is an active participant in conferences worldwide and is a highly engaged member of IEEE, CIGRE D1 as well as IEC TC10 and TC14.




Mr. Carl Wolmarans has a B.Sc. (Eng) degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Carl has worked at Eskom (utility) in South Africa, within the Power Transformer section, and is currently working at Nynas AB in Sweden as a Technical Advisor. Carl’s research interests include Partial Discharge (PD), streamer propagation in liquids, oxidation stability and insulation in general. Carl is an active member of Cigré D1 and IEC TC10.





Jakob Haemmerle graduated with a Master’s degree in Mechatronics from the FH Vorarlberg in Dornbirn, Austria. Working for OMICRON since 2013, he has started in product development in Klaus, Austria, focusing on small series products for special applications. From 2016 to 2018 he has gained international working experience as Application Engineer for testing and diagnosis of primary assets at OMICRON UK. Back at OMICRON Austria, he is in the same role specializing on power transformers.






Alfonso de Pablo holds a Master in Chemistry, specialising in Organic Chemistry, from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain. He spent most of his working life at the Asociación de Investigación Industrial Eléctrica (ASINEL). After its demise, he worked in other companies including Kelman, General Electric and TJH2b. His fields of interest are the analysis of insulating oils and the diagnosis of the transformer condition by means of oil analysis (dissolved gas analysis, degradation of cellulosic papers, analysis of furans, polychlorinated biphenyls, etc.).
He has led several research projects related to the regeneration of insulating oils, degradation of cellulosic papers, analysis and removal of polychlorinated biphenyls and the effect of metal passivators on transformer stability.
He has been Chairman of IEC TC 10 (Fluids for Electrotechnical Applications) (1995-2007) and Spanish representative in CIGRE SC 15 (Emerging Materials and Technologies) (1998-2006). As chairman (Convenor) of CIGRE Task Forces 15.01.03 and 15.01.05, he coordinated the publication of studies related to the degradation of cellulosic papers. He is the author of the so-called De Pablo degradation model. He has given several seminars on transformer oils and is the author or co-author of some thirty scientific papers at national and international conferences.




Amit Bakshi received the B.Tech. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra, Haryana, India, in 2006 and the M.Tech. degree in Advanced Power System and Control from the National Institute of Technology Hamirpur, Himachal Pradesh, India, in 2008. He received the Ph.D. degree from the Department of Electrical Engineering,Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India, in 2013. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Shiv Nadar University, Uttar Pradesh, India. His area of interest is on shortcircuit strength analysis of power transformers.




David Vinci is currently Regional Sales Manager smart grid at Maschinenfabrik Reinhausen GmbH. He is the leading expert for Europe on the On-Load Tap-Changer for distribution transformers. He is also global expert of this product line for all special applications like small hydro, batteries storage, power to gas, vehicle to grid, as well as TSO and industrial applications. After a Master of Engineering, he started his career at Enedis, the French DSO, as an operations manager. He start the last decade as a consultant for electrical network projects in Europe and Africa, before specialising in transformers. He joins Maschinenfabrik Reinhausen GmbH in 2020 to support the development of the new product line of On-Load Tap-Changer dedicated to small transformers.




Alexander Schmidt graduated from the German Technical College in Villingen-Schwenningen and studied Electrical Engineering at the University of Applied Sciences in Furtwangen, in Germany. His employment experience includes leading of multiple projects at such companies like Rheinmetall Defense, ALSTOM Transmission & Distribution and General Electric Company. He is currently the leading technical expert for monitoring and diagnostics solutions for European region, with special fields of interest in High Frequency Partial Discharge (PD) and online DGA monitoring data analysis.




Jesús Muñoz-Cruzado-Alba was born in Cádiz, Spain, in 1984. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Telecommunications and Electronics Engineering and the Ph.D. degree in power Electronics from the University of Seville, Spain, in 2007, 2011, and 2016, respectively. In 2009, he joined GPTech, Seville, where he was a part of the Research and Development Department developing power converters for renewable energies applications. Since 2017, he has been a Power Electronics Researcher with Fundación CIRCE Innovation Technology Centre, Zaragoza, Spain, where he is currently a Leader of the Power Electronics Team for Grid Integration Applications.




Jose I. Aizpurua finished his Telecommunications Engineering studies at Mondragon University (MU) in 2010. He got the PhD from MU in 01/2015 in the area of Information & Communication Technologies, focused on Reliability Engineering applications. During his PhD he was a visiting researcher at a major Spanish railway company and at the Dependable Intelligent Systems group at the University of Hull (UK). He has been a postdoctoral researcher for 4 years at the University of Strathclyde, Institute for Energy & Environment (Glasgow, UK). During this period, he designed, developed, and delivered prognostics & health management (PHM) applications for the power & energy industry. From 02/2019 he is a Lecturer and Researcher at MU, and an Ikerbasque Research Fellow from 09/2020. Dr Aizpurua is a Senior IEEE member, and a member of IEEE Power and Energy society and IEEE Reliability society. His research interests include development and deployment of intelligent PHM and dependability solutions for the power and energy sector.





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