Marcelo de Albuquerque e Mello received his B.A. and M.A. in Economics from the Pontifical Catholic University at Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), Brazil. In 1995, he initiated his graduate studies in Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), having graduated in 2002. Along with his doctorate in Economics, he earned a M.Sc. degree in Applied Mathematics from UIUC.

He has done research in economic growth and applied econometrics, both of which are still his active research fields. His teaching interests include macroeconomics, growth and development, and econometrics. He taught at UIUC in the 2001-2002 academic year as a full-time lecturer in the Economics Department. In the fall of 2002 he moved to Virginia Tech as an assistant professor of economics (tenure track), a position he held until the spring of 2007. At Virginia Tech, he received from the Economics Department the award “Undergraduate Teacher of the Year”, 2004-2005, for best teaching in undergraduate education. During the academic year of 2005-2006 he was on leave at Faculdades Ibmec/RJ.

Since July 2005 he has a full-time appointment at Faculdades Ibmec/RJ, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.