Dr. Casanova graduated in Electronic Engineering from the Military Institute of Engineering (1974). He obtained his Master of Science in Informatics from Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, PUC-Rio (1976) , and Master of Science (1978) and PhD (1979) in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University. He has been the coordinator of graduate studies (2005-2007) and director

(2007-2011) of the Department of Informatics at PUC-Rio, where he currently holds the position of Full Professor. In July 2012, he was appointed Central Planning and Evaluation Coordinator of PUC-Rio. His research focuses on conceptual database modeling and on building database management systems. For all the contributions, in July 2012, he received the Brazilian Computer Society's Scientific Merit Award.