About Me

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at The University of Texas at Tyler, with a joint courtesy appointment in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the School of Medicine.

Prior to joining UT Tyler, I was a postdoctoral associate in the Laboratory for Systems Medicine at the University of Florida, working under the supervision of Dr. Luis Sordo Vieira. I also completed postdoctoral training at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in the Department of Pediatrics, where I worked in the laboratory of Dr. Amber Smith.

I obtained my PhD in Mathematics at the University of Pittsburgh, working under the supervision of Dr. Jonathan Rubin and Dr. David Swigon, and in close collaboration with Dr. Gilles Clermont. Prior to that, I earned a Master’s in Mathematics at East Tennessee State University under the direction of Dr. Ariel Cintron-Arias. I completed my undergraduate studies in Mathematics at Universidad de Costa Rica.

My research focuses on the development and analysis of mathematical models of biological and physiological systems, particularly those involving infection, inflammation, and the immune response. I am interested in both mechanistic and data-driven models that can be used to understand how interactions among pathogens, immune cells, inflammatory mediators, and physiological processes give rise to different disease outcomes.

A major theme of my work has been immunometabolism, with an emphasis on the interplay between cellular metabolism, energy production and consumption, and the acute inflammatory response. In particular, I have investigated whether disruptions in energy availability and metabolic regulation can contribute to systemic inflammation, organ dysfunction, and sepsis.

More recently, my research has expanded to include the complement system and innate immunity, mathematical models of pulmonary infection and inflammation, and the spatial dynamics of host-pathogen interactions. I am particularly interested in understanding how immune mechanisms such as complement activation, neutrophil and macrophage responses, tissue damage, and inflammatory signaling interact with pathogen growth and dissemination. These questions motivate the development of ordinary and partial differential equation models, as well as multiscale and spatial modeling approaches.

I am also interested in interactions among multiple biological processes and scales, including bacterial competition and cooperation, fungal infections, coupled inflammatory and cardiovascular responses, and the mechanisms that determine whether an immune response successfully resolves an infection or progresses toward persistent inflammation or severe disease.

Another component of my research involves parameter estimation, uncertainty quantification, sensitivity analysis, and the integration of experimental and clinical data with mechanistic models. I am interested in using statistical and machine-learning tools to extract information from biomedical data and to use that information to inform probabilistic and deterministic mathematical models, generate hypotheses, and identify mechanisms that may be difficult to isolate experimentally.

More generally, I am interested in using mathematical and computational tools to study problems arising in immunology, infectious diseases, oncology, epidemiology, population dynamics, physiology, and other areas of the life sciences.