He earned a B.S. in Physics Engineering, and a M.Sc. in Applied Mathematics from the Instituto Superior Tecnico in Lisbon, Portugal, and his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. Before joining KAUST he was a Professor of Mathematics at the Mathematics Department of Instituto Superior Tecnico in Lisbon.  His research interest span degenerate elliptic and parabolic partial differential equations, deterministic and stochastic optimal control, Aubry-Mather theory, numerical methods. His current main area of interests is mean field games. The aim of his research is to study problems where a very large number of identical rational agents are competition. Such models arise in many important applications such as renewable and non-renewable energy, environmental policy, and economic growth theory.