Luciano Perdigão Cota holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), with a postdoctoral fellowship in optimization at ITV MI. He is an adjunct researcher at ITV, working in the area of optimization applied to mining and industry. He is a permanent professor in the following graduate programs:
Specialization in Process Automation; Specialization in Mining; PROFICAM Master’s Degree (ITV/UFOP); PPGTIM Master’s Degree (ITV/Unifesspa); Master’s and PhD programs in PPGCC (UFOP).
He advises master’s and doctoral students, contributing directly to academic and scientific training in various fields of engineering and mining.

He has experience in metaheuristics, mixed-integer linear programming, simheuristics, routing, sequencing, blending, and mining problems, as well as other industrial applications. He is a member of the Brazilian Operations Research Society (SOBRAPO), the GOAL group (UFOP), and a collaborator in the Production Engineering and Computational Intelligence group at the Federal University of Ceará (UFC).