de Castro Silva, Leandro (Ph.D.)
Director of Dendritic: A Human-Centered AI and Data Science Institute/Professor
U.A. Whitaker College of Engineering
HOLMES 0126D
Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Natural Computing, Entrepreneurship
Leandro Nunes de Castro holds a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the Federal University
of Goiás (1996), and M.Sc. (1998) and Ph.D. (2001) degrees in Computer Engineering
from the University of Campinas (Unicamp), Brazil. He also earned an MBA in Strategic
Business Management from the Catholic University of Santos (2008). His international
academic experience includes appointments as Research Associate at the University
of Kent (UK), and a Senior Research Fellowship at the University of Salamanca (Spain).
Dr. de Castro has held academic and leadership positions across multiple institutions.
At Mackenzie Presbyterian University, he served as Associate Professor in the Graduate
Program in Electrical Engineering and Computing (2008–2022), Research Chair of the
Computing and Informatics School (2016–2017), and Chief Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Officer (2017–2020), where he led university-wide initiatives connecting research,
innovation, and industry engagement. Earlier in his career, he founded and directed
the Intelligent Systems Laboratory at the Catholic University of Santos (2004–2008),
and later founded and led the Natural Computing and Machine Learning Laboratory at
Mackenzie (2009–2022). More recently, he served as Chief Executive Officer of In.lab
at InovaHC–Hospital das Clínicas, University of São Paulo (2022–2023), leading large-scale
AI initiatives in healthcare. He is currently a Full Professor in the Department of
Computing and Software Engineering at Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU) and the
Founding Director of the Dendritic Institute for Human-Centered AI and Data Science,
where he leads the development of integrated AI initiatives that connect research,
education, workforce development, and industry partnerships.
His research spans Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Natural Computing,
with an emphasis on data-driven systems, optimization, and real-world applications
in areas such as health, environment, business, and education. He has authored five
books, including Artificial Immune Systems: A New Computational Intelligence Approach (Springer, 2002), Fundamentals of Natural Computing (CRC Press, 2006), Natural Computing: An Illustrated Journey (In Portuguese, Livraria da Fisica, 2010), Introduction to Data Mining (In Portuguese, Saraiva, 2016), and the recent Exploratory Data Analysis: Descriptive Analysis, Visualization, and Dashboard Design (CRC Press, 2026). He has published more than 250 peer-reviewed papers and supervised
over 20 graduate students at the M.Sc. and Ph.D. levels. He has served as Principal
Investigator and collaborator in multiple funded research projects and was the Founding
Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Natural Computing Research (IGI Global). Since 2020 he has been recognized among the top 2% most influential
researchers worldwide based on citation impact metrics reported by PLoS Biology.
In addition to his academic career, Dr. de Castro has extensive experience in innovation
and entrepreneurship. He has co-founded three AI-based startups and has participated
as an angel investor in additional ventures, contributing to the development and scaling
of AI-driven solutions. His work consistently bridges research, education, and applied
innovation, with a focus on building ecosystems that translate artificial intelligence
into real-world impact.
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