Kyle Gustafson is a transdisciplinary physicist working on data-driven models of complex systems for national security applications, currently in São Paulo, Brazil with the Office of Naval Research.
Kyle’s has been serving as Global Science Director in Brazil since October 2021 and plans to be there for several years. He is working to fill gaps and identify new directions for Navy and US priorities while supporting fundamental research for the common good.
His expertise includes machine learning, data-driven cyber-physical models, high-performance computing, genomic data analysis, infectious disease modeling, and numerical methods in plasma physics. After earning his PhD in computational plasma physics at the University of Maryland with Prof. William Dorland, he was awarded an NSF International Research Fellowship (2010-12) and then was invited to the lab of Prof. Felix Naef at the EPFL (2012-15). After his return to the US in 2016, he studied epidemiological modeling as a postdoc with Dr. Joshua L. Proctor at the Institute for Disease Modeling, part of the Global Good initiative of Bill and Melinda Gates.
Kyle has also co-produced and performed in three full-length plays and many improv shows, led by scientist/creative director Prof. Adria Leboeuf as part of the Catalyst theater collective.
