Ignacio J. Pérez-Arriaga was born in Madrid in 1948. He received his MS and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from MIT, and the electrical engineering degree from the Universidad Pontificia Comillas (UPC) in Madrid, Spain. He is a professor of electrical engineering at UPC, and founded its Institute for Research in Technology, which he served as director for for 11 years. He has also been vice rector for research at UPC, and currently holds the BP Chair on sustainable development.

Prof. Pérez-Arriaga served for five years as commissioner at the Spanish Electricity Regulatory Commission, and from 2007 to 2012 he was the independent member of the Single Electricity Market Committee of Ireland. He was also a member of the Board of Appeal of the Agency for the Coordination of Energy Regulators (ACER) in the EU. He serves as director of energy training at the Florence School of Regulation, European University Institute, Florence, Italy. He has worked in power system dynamic analysis; monitoring and diagnosis of power system devices and systems; intelligent computer design of industrial systems, planning and operation of electric generation and networks; regulation and restructuring of the power industry; and sustainability of national and global energy models and electricity access in developing countries.

He has been a consultant for governmental agencies or electric utilities in more than 30 countries. Prof. Pérez-Arriaga is a member of the Spanish National Academy of Engineering and a Life Fellow of the IEEE. He has published more than 200 papers, been a principal investigator in more than 75 research projects, and supervised more than 30 doctoral theses on the aforementioned topics. He is a Senior Lecturer at MIT (2008-present), at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR), where he teaches a graduate course on power system regulation, engineering and economics. He was a review editor of the 5th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).