My PHD project focuses on understanding factors influencing individual sustainable consumption behaviour and how these factors could promote a sustainability transition.

I have been working in the software implementation of different kinds of complex networks inspired in real-life populations. My software may be classified on several categories: complex networks, Aedes aegypti development, dengue epidemics, cultural behavior of populations. I am also researching in education of Deaf people in Colombia.

I am fascinated by unraveling water-scarcity patterns. I am an expert in Integrated Assessment Modelling and Water Footprint Assessment. The concepts and tools that I have developed and applied all aim at availing knowledge at scales relevant to decision-makers in the water sector. During my PhD at the University of Twente I evaluated how spatiotemporal patterns of water availability relate to patterns of water use for a river basin in the semi-arid Northeast of Brazil. I have used agent-based modelling and developed the downstreamness concept to analyze the emergence of basin closure. This concept is helpful to water managers for identifying priority locations for intervention inside a river basin system. As a postdoc I continued to evaluate the relation between water use and availability and further broadened my scope to a wider range of related topics.

I am interested in the interface between biology and computation. I am especially focused on modelling and simulation of evolutionary processes.

Complex Systems, Social Modeling and Simulation
Engineering the Futures

For my Ph.D. thesis, I developed a system to play poker.
I’m interested to see whether a similar approach can be applied to agent based models.

I am interested in modeling social behavior. I have been working in the field of labor economics and industrial relations and how micro-simulations determine aggregate outcomes.

I study human dimensions of natural resource management and resource use by under-represented populations—often in developing nations—to enhance our understanding of conflicts involving land use, natural resources, and conservation from an interdisciplinary, systematic lens. My research spans subjects such as common pool resource management and policy, decentralization, and land use/land cover change drivers and trends relating to population rise and environmental change.

Ecology - Natural Resources Management (Community-based management)

I worked on natural resources management modelling in STELLA. I developed a technical and scientific model to analyze soil, climate and biological conditions to explain how Bamboo ecosystem works and how people in Cundinamarca, Colombia could focus on a sustainable model for use and manage forestry resources.
Also, I worked on the seventh framework program named: Community-based management of Environmental Challenges in Latin America -COMET-LA-. The project built a learning arena with scientists, civil society and government to identify sustainable models for governance of natural resources in social-ecological systems located in a rural context from Colombia, México and Argentina.

I am interesting in research on Modelling of governance and Community-based management of natural resources.

I am interested in questions of method, and in the application of computational social models to a wide variety of national security questions (such as counterterrorism and counterinsurgency) as well as decision-making around complex natural resources such as water. My methods interest center on the use of qualitative social theory to inform the structure of computational social models, and the ways in which such models handle qualitative data. This raises questions around the nature of data and the ways in which computational social models convey information to decision-makers.