New Faculty Spotlight: Mauricio Santillana

Mauricio Santillana

Mauricio Santillana joins the Electrical & Computer Engineering department in April 2022 as a Professor with a joint appointment in Physics.

Mauricio Santillana, PhD, MSc is the director of the Machine Intelligence Research Lab in the Network Science Institute. He is a Professor in the Physics and Electrical and Computer Engineering Departments at Northeastern University. 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, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and multiple foundations such as: the Johnson and Johnson Foundation, Ending Pandemics Fund,

Related Departments:Electrical & Computer Engineering