Rafael Peña earned the Electrical Engineer degree in 2004 and later the MSc. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, in 2006 and 2010, respectively.

He did a research stay at the University of Strathclyde, Scotland (2007-2008) and at the Universidad de la Costa, Colombia (2018).

He is a member of the National System of Researchers, in the Level "1". He has published two book chapters, fourteen papers in journals indexed by the JCR, one paper in an international peer-reviewed journal, one paper in a divulgation journal, twenty-seven international conferences and eighteen national conferences, as well as, He has participated in seven research projects.

He has also worked as a part-time professor at the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, as a full-time professor at the Universidad de La Ciénega del Estado de Michoacán de Ocampo, and is currently with the Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí as full-time professor-researcher.

His interests are the feasibility, analysis, and operation of distributed generation systems based on renewable energy sources and computational techniques applied to solve problems associated with power systems.

1. Distributed generation systems based on renewable energy sources

1. Nonlinear Dynamical Systems