Born and raised in El Salvador, Ricardo moved to the United States to major in Computer Science at Vanderbilt University. Ricardo is broadly interested in ways computational frameworks can be used for social good and has become increasingly interested in the democratization of machine learning. 

Ricardo has been fortunate to collaborate with some incredible individuals throughout his time as an undergraduate student. He has done work with Dr. Rediet Abebe, Dr. Elena Glassman, and Sara Kingsley to survey data practices and feature selection approaches of social work researchers, and analyzes the ways in which these sometimes differ from those of data science and machine learning researchers. With Dr. Abebe and Dr. Jon Kleinberg, Ricardo is researching ways in which machine learning models can be used to gain qualitative insights about poverty and inequality. Since his freshman year, Ricardo has been doing research with Dr. Daniel Work and Dr. William Barbour that leverages the use of large mobility datasets, coupled with machine learning models, to understand transportation systems at large scale. Ricardo is also working alongside Dr. Janos Sztipanovits, Dr. Ethan Jackson, Dr. Himanshu Neema and other amazing collaborators on a project that seeks to develop a data and AI platform for monitoring and predicting biothreats. 

While in Nashville, Ricardo has had the pleasure to do service at Workers’ Dignity, ACEing Autism, and the Nashville International Center for Empowerment. During his last year at Vanderbilt, Ricardo is excited to keep helping the Nashville community and continue developing his ideas around ways computing can be used for social good.