Santiago was born and raised in Medellín, Colombia. He received his B.S in Mechanical Engineering from Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (UPB) back in the Fall of 2015. During his time as an undergrad, Santiago was interested in the development of medical devices as well as developing leadership skills, so he used medical devices to inspire class projects and became the student representative for the 2014-2015 period. During his last semester of undergrad, Santiago joined the Computational Bioengineering and Controls (CBC) lab at UTSA as an intern and worked under Dr. Yusheng Feng in the development of a computational model for pancreatic parenchyma, as well as the development of a computational model of gold nano-bipyramids aided by Dr. Kathryn Mayer. In the Fall of 2016, Santiago joined the Ph.D program in Mechanical Engineering and started working on the development of a computational model of plasmonic photothermal therapy, using gold nanoparticles and laser light to aid in the treatment of pancreatic cancer. Santiago earned his M.S in the Fall of 2019 and joined Dr. Hood’s lab to work in the experimental validation and characterization of thermal and optical properties of pancreatic tissue. Outside of school, Santiago enjoys drawing, swimming, reading, and cooking.