Prior to joining the Department of Industrial Engineering, I have been Director for Quality Assurance of Higher Education in the Ministry of Education. I obtained my Ph.D. in 2014 at Universidad de los Andes under the supervision of Professor Roberto Zarama. During my career as a researcher I have been member of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Basic and Applied Complexity (CeiBa), the Epidemiology Group of Universidad de los Andes (EpiAndes), the Systems Theory Group (TESO) and an affiliate member of the Onnela Lab from the Biostatistics Department of the Harvard School of Public Health.​

​

In the education sector, I have increased the efficiency of the quality assurance system for higher education while maintaining the system´s capability to assess a diverse offer of higher education programs. I have contributed to the goal of increasing the quality of higher education of Colombia by establishing cohesion mechanisms among system actors, defining quality assurance policies, desiging and implementing quality guidelines and standards for academic evaluation, formulating optimization models for the evaluation processes, and constructing indicators and dashboards for improving information systems. My main project was the design and implementation of the Model of Performance Indicators for Higher Education of Colombia (MIDE).  

​

In the health sector I´m engaged in a number of  multidisciplinary projects that involve complex systems, network science, and statistics. For example, I have used complex systems approach to estimate how attributes of the built environment—urban densities, land-use mixes, accessibility, and proximity to transit—are associated with walking and cycling behavior in the Ciclovía Recreativa, a community mass program. I also calculated the cost-benefit ratio for physical activity promotion of the program in 4 cities with different environmental conditions. I also proposed a multi-sector and systems-wide approach through megatrends, specifically information and communication technologies and car ownership, to increase population-levels of physical activity worldwide. I have also been involved in a study that is part of the Colombian component of the International Physical Activity Environment Network (IPEN) aimed to assess the association between walking behaviors, use and access to the Bogota´s Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system known as Transmilenio among adults during the 2005 and 2010–11 periods. I have also proposed to analyze interaction patterns among individuals in rural environments for estimating cohesion and segregation predictors in villages of India. 

 

​

​

​

​

I resume my thoughs in this short poem:

 

We are all involved in social networks,
the human property of evolution.
we fight to adapt in a web of trust,
we blink our eyes with love and lust.

We are all involved in social networks,
the emergent cause of our complexity.
We are the lambs of our reason,
we live the rules of our vision.

​