Alexandre de Bustamante Simas
Biography
Alexandre Simas is a research scientist at KAUST in the Stochastic Processes and Applied Statistics group. His research lies at the interface of probability, statistics, and mathematical analysis, with a strong focus on stochastic partial differential equations (SPDEs), random fields on complex domains, and statistical computation.
He earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the Instituto Nacional de Matemática Pura e Aplicada (IMPA), Brazil, with part of his doctoral research conducted at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, NYU, under the mentorship of S. R. S. Varadhan. Before joining KAUST, Alexandre held faculty positions at the Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB), where he was an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics.
He has co-developed several R packages, including rSPDE, MetricGraph, and ngme2, and has a strong publication record in areas such as spatial modeling, beta regression, Gaussian processes, and functional Itô calculus.
Research Interests
Alexandre’s research focuses on:
- Gaussian random fields on metric graphs and manifolds
- Bayesian inference for SPDE-based models
- Functional analysis and partial differential equations
- Interacting particle systems and hydrodynamic limits
- Statistical computing and the development of open-source tools in R
He actively collaborates on both theoretical and computational developments for modeling complex data with underlying spatial or graph-based structures.
Education
- Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
- Mathematics, Instituto Nacional de Matemática Pura e Aplicada, Brazil, 2010
- Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
- Visiting Student, New York University, United States, 2010
- Bachelor of Science (B.S.)
- Statistics, Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil, 2002
Quote
“In my work, I seek to combine the rigor of theoretical statistics with the creativity of computational methods to solve real-world problems in data analysis and modeling.”
