M. Cerrolaza is civil engineer graduated in the Central University of Venezuela in 1980 (awarded Magna CumLaude) also awarded by the Venezuelan Association of Engineers as the Best Graduated in engineering. In Jan-1980 he got a grant from UNESCO (program B-31) to study a Magister Scientiarum (MSc) at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). In Sept-1985, he won a scholarship from the Institute for Iberoamerican Cooperation (ICI-Spain) to undertake a Ph.D. in engineering at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, completed in June-1988 (the thesis was awarded CumLaude and won the 1988 UPM Best PhD Thesis award). In Jan-1995, he was invited by the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees (París, France), to pursue a Postdoc, granted by a postdoc-fellowship from the Venezuelan Ministry of Science and Technology. In Sept-2011 he joined the International Centre for Numerical Methods in Engineering (Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Barcelona) as Senior Researcher with a Marie Curie CIG-European Commission project.