I received the BS degree in computer science from the Universidade Positivo (1995), Curitiba, PR, Brazil, MSc degree in electrical engineering and industrial informatics from the Federal University of Technology – Parana (UTFPR), Curitiba, PR, Brazil (1998), and Ph.D. degree from the Université du Quebec – Ecole de Technologie Superieure (ETS), Montreal, QC, Canada (2003). From 1994 to 1998 I was system analyst at HSBC Bank, Curitiba, PR, Brazil, where I worked on reengineering and financial systems. In 2000, I started to work in my PhD project in the Laboratory for Imagery, Vision, and Artificial Intelligence (LIVIA) in Montreal, under the supervision of Prof. Robert Sabourin from ETS and Prof. Ching Suen from CENPARMI. My thesis titled “Automatic Recognition of Handwritten Numerical Strings”, received the prize for the best 2003 Ph.D. thesis.  The jury was composed of Prof. Tony Wong (ETS), Prof. Jacques de Guise (ETS) Prof. Ching Suen (Concordia University), Prof. Yoshua Bengio (University of Montreal). From 2000 to 2003 I was also visiting researcher at CENPARMI.

From 2004 to 2005 I was visiting professor (posdoc supported by The National Council for Scientific and Technological Development, CNPq) at the Pontifical Catholic University of Parana, Curitiba, PR, Brazil. From 2005 to 2009 I was professor of computer science at the Pontifical Catholic University of Parana (PUCPR) and head of the Vision, Image, and Robotics research group. Currently I´m with the Department of Informatics of Federal University of Parana (UFPR), Curitiba, PR, where I’m  head of the Graduate Program in Computer Science for the second term (2011-2014, 2017-2019). In 2015, I was invited professor at Université de Roeun, in France. I’m also an associated member of the LIVIA at ETS. Since 2006 I´m a CNPq researcher fellow (level 1D). In 2017 I received the IBM Faculty Awards for the work on texture classification. My research interests include pattern recognition and machine learning. For more details, visit my publications.

Since 2000 I have collaborated as program committee member and reviewer for several conferences and peer-reviewed journals. With some colleagues, we have organized some conferences Curitiba, Brazil (ISMIR, CBDAR, IAPR GREC, and IAPR ICDAR). In the recent years I have contributed as program Chair and competition chair in workshops and conferences such as ICFHR and ICDAR. Currently I’m associate editor for the IJDAR, ESWA, and SNCS journals.