Prior to joining the department, Dr. Montes has been the Director for Quality Assurance for Higher Education at the Ministry of National Education of Colombia. Dr. Montes is interested in contributing to improving public health and higher education indicators of Colombia by modeling populations as complex systems using data analytics and mathematical simulations, specially by applying network science. He has been a visiting researcher at the Complexity Lab- University de Barcelon and at the Biostatistics Department- Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health where he has developed social network analyses to potentiate public health interventions with spill-over effects.