Harvard Catalyst Profiles

Mauricio Santillana, PhD, MSc is the director of the Machine Intelligence Group for the betterment of Health and the Environment (MIGHTE) at the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University. He is a Professor at both the Physics and Electrical and Computer Engineering Departments at Northeastern University, and an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Epidemiology, at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
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Dr. Santillana’s research areas include the modeling of geographic patterns of population growth, modeling fluid flow to inform coastal floods simulations and atmospheric global pollution transport models, and most recently, the design and implementation of disease outbreaks prediction platforms and mathematical solutions to healthcare. His research has shown that machine learning techniques can be used to effectively monitor and predict the dynamics of disease outbreaks using novel data sources not designed for these purposes such as: Internet search activity, social media posts, clinician’s searches, human mobility, weather, etc.

His original research and perspectives have appeared in journals such as Nature, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Science Advances, Nature Communications, and Nature Climate Change, among others. His work has been funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (National Institutes of Health, NIH), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and multiple foundations such as: the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Johnson and Johnson Foundation, Ending Pandemics Fund, Skoll Global Threats Fund.

Dr. Santillana has advised the US CDC, Africa CDC, and the White House on the development of population-wide disease forecasting tools. His original research and perspectives have been featured in a diverse array of national and international news outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, Vox.com, Politico, National Public Radio, CNN, CNN Espanol, Fox, BBC, among others.

?Mauricio received a B.S. in Physics with highest honors from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City, and a Master’s and PhD in Computational and Applied Mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin. Mauricio was a Postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Center for the Environment and later became a lecturer in applied mathematics at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, receiving two awards for excellence in teaching. He became a tenure-track faculty member at Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He recently joined the faculty at Northeastern University.