Sergei graduated in physics at the Jesuit University in Rio de Janeiro (1990) and has a masters and a PhD in economics from the University of Brasília. He has worked at the Institute for Applied Economic Studies (Ipea) in Brasília since 1998 and has been at the IPC-IG since 2015. He was president of Ipea from May of 2014 to September of 2015. He taught at Georgetown University in 2016. His work has been on inequality, poverty, education, racial discrimination, social protection, and the labour market. He has been at the ILO since 2020 and is now in the Research Department.