Interest Areas

Data Analysis, Machine Learning,  Deep Learning, Data Mining, Web Scraping, Big Data Analytics, Computer Simulation, and Visualization. 

Short Biography

I grew up in Puyehue, a town in the  North Patagonian region of Chile. Then, I moved to study a Bachelor of Science and a Master in Economics at the University of Concepcion. In 2014, I started working in the Statistics Department of the Central Bank of Chile.  After five years working, and supported by Fulbright and the National Agency for Research and Development, Chile, I have been nominated for a PhD scholarship to study a Data Science program in Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), Massachusetts, United States (2018-2022). Currently, I’m part of the Data-driven Intelligent Systems lab (DAISY) at WPI. 

Work and Academic Positions

  • Present Data Science PhD Candidate

    Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI)
    Massachusetts, USA.

  • 2018 Web Scraping and Text Mining Lecturer

    Faculty of Physical Sciences and Mathematics (undergraduate)
    Universidad de Chile, Chile

  • 2014 - 2018 Economic Analyst

    Department of Statistics, Central Bank of Chile

  • 2012-2013 Economics and Econometrics Lecturer

    Departament of Economics (undergraduate and graduate)
    Universidad de Concepcion, Chile

Selected Awards

The most important recognitions are related to my education and my job at Central Bank of Chile.

Ph.D. Scholarship (2018-2022)

Ph.D. Scholarship to study in the United States, supported by Fulbright Foreign Student Program and the National Agency for Research and Development (ANID), Chile.

Innovator of the year (2015)

Innovator of the year, nominated by the Statistics Department of Central Bank of Chile.

Masters scholarship (2012-2013)

National masters scholarship supported by National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICYT ) of Chile.

Selected Publications

More Publications

Depression Screening Using Deep Learning on Follow-up Questions in Clinical Interviews

20th IEEE International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA, 2021)
Ricardo Flores, ML Tlachac, Ermal Toto, Elke A. Rundensteiner
Publisher's website

A Bayesian quantile binary regression approach to estimate payments for environmental services

Environment and Development Economics, Volume 22, 2017, Pages 156–176
Felipe Vasquez, Ricardo Flores, Veronica Ibarnegary
Publisher's website

A Bayesian method to estimate the distribution of the willingness to pay

Chilean Journal of Economics and Society, Volume 11(1), 2017, Pages 31-37
Ricardo Flores
Publisher's website

Housing Price Index for Chile: Methodology and Results

Studies in Economic Statistics of the Central Bank of Chile, N° 107, June 2014
Camilo Vio, Carmen Gloria Silva, Carolina del Campo, Romina Villarroel, Ricardo Flores y Josue Perez
Publisher's website

Research Projects

I have been working on a variety of projects related to Data Science, Economics and Statistics. For example, I have done some research on Healthcare, Environmental Valuation, Health Economics, and Housing Market.

Research Projects

Software used

Programming