Mauricio Santillana

(he/him)

Professor, Khoury College of Computer Sciences, Affiliate Appointment

Mauricio Santillana
  • Data science
  • Machine learning
  • Network science  
  • Postdoctoral degree in Computational and Digital Epidemiology, Harvard Medical School
  • Postdoctoral degree in Atmospheric and Climate Sciences, Harvard University
  • PhD in Computational and Applied Mathematics, University of Texas at Austin
  • MS in Computational and Applied Mathematics, University of Texas at Austin
  • BS in Physics, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México — Mexico

Mauricio Santillana is a professor in the College of Science and the College of Engineering at Northeastern University, based in Boston. He holds courtesy appointments in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences and the Bouvé College of Health Sciences. 

A physicist and applied mathematician who has become a leading voice in computational epidemiology and public health informatics, Santillana uses novel data sources and machine learning systems to monitor and forecast infectious disease outbreaks. He creates predictive models to improve patient outcomes and reduce costs in critical care medicine, while also researching antibiotic resistance patterns using climate variables. His expertise also extends to modeling atmospheric chemistry, coastal flooding, and population growth. 

Santillana leads the Machine Intelligence Group for the betterment of Health and The Environment (MIGHTE), which is jointly based at Northeastern’s Network Science Institute and Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The group’s research uses machine intelligence analytics tools to predict health-care-related events like disease outbreaks that will occur in the immediate future. 

Santillana’s research has attracted more than $27 million in funding from the CDC, NIH, NSF, and more, as well as coverage from The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and CNN. He has advised the White House and the CDC on disease forecasting — including during the COVID-19 pandemic — and published more than 100 articles in prestigious journals including Science, Nature, PNAS, Science Advances, and Nature Communications. Santillana has also consistently been recognized among the “World’s Top 2%” scientists by Stanford University. 

Before joining Northeastern in 2022, Santillana was a faculty member at Harvard’s J. A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard Medical School, and Boston Children’s Hospital, earning two teaching excellence awards at the Paulson School.