Luís A. Nunes Amaral, Ph.D.
Erastus Otis Haven Professor - PI
Department of Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics
Northwestern University
Role: Luís Amaral has extensive experience leading multidisciplinary initiatives, including Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems, NU Data Science Initiative, and SCALES Convergence Accelerator. He leads the overall project by ensuring the scientific progress of the core infrastructure and data engineering, planning for the partnership and outreach activities, managing the budget allocations, and leading the team to meet all deliverables.
Bio: Professor Amaral, a native of Portugal, conducts and directs research that provides insight into the emergence, evolution, and stability of complex social and biological systems. Amaral received a K-25 Career award from NIGMS, was named to the 2006 class of Distinguished Young Scholars in Medical Research by the W. M. Keck Foundation and appointed an Early Career Scientist by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute from 2009 to 2015. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers, and the Network Science Society.
Amaral has mentored 25+ graduate students and 20+ postdoctoral fellows. He has also held significant mentoring responsibilities for dozens of undergraduate and high-school students who completed internships in his lab. Amaral’s research has been published in leading scientific journals, including Nature, Science, Cell, PNAS, Nature Physics, Nature Human Behaviour, Nature Machine Intelligence, Physical Review Letters, Physical Review X, PLOS Biology, and eLife. These results reported in the publications have been featured in numerous media sources, both in the US and abroad.