Rei Sanchez-Arias

Assistant Professor - 9
Reinaldo Sanchez-Arias

Phone 863-874-8743

Location Main Campus

Office ARC-1111

Directory Data Science, Business Analytics

Dr. Reinaldo (Rei) Sanchez-Arias joined Florida Polytechnic University in the fall 2018 and is an assistant professor of data science and serves as the assistant chair of the Department of Data Science and Business Analytics. Sanchez-Arias earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from Universidad del Valle in Cali, Colombia. In the fall of 2008 he started his doctoral studies in the Computational Science Program at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). During his years at UTEP, he was involved in research projects for the Army High-Performance Computing Research Center (AHPCRC) in collaboration with a group at Stanford University. He interned at Repsol Oil Company USA during the summer of 2011, where he worked with the Research and Innovation Geophysics Department. He obtained a Ph.D. degree in computational science from UTEP in the spring of 2013, working on sparse representation methods for classification problems and dimensionality reduction. He completed a postdoctoral researcher appointment for the AHPCRC working in reduced order models for underbody-blast simulations and compression techniques. From 2014 to 2016, Sanchez-Arias was part of the Applied Mathematics Department at Wentworth Institute of Technology (WIT) in Boston, Massachusetts, where he taught courses for applied mathematics and engineering students, nominated and served as the faculty advisor for the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Student Chapter, coordinated linear algebra and capstone courses, and helped develop different elective courses in applied mathematics. In the fall of 2016, Sanchez-Arias joined St Thomas University, in Miami, Florida, where he served as the program director for the master of science degree in big data analytics in the School of Science, advised and supervised graduate students in the School of Science, and revised curriculum for the computer science and mathematics undergraduate programs.

In the fall of 2018, he joined the Department of Data Science and Business Analytics (DSBA) at Florida Poly, where he leads multiple data science research projects, and teaches courses for the BS in Data Science, BS in Business Analytics, MS in Data Science, and MS in Engineering Management programs. Sanchez-Arias was the recipient of Florida Poly’s Excellence in Teaching Ablaze Award in 2020. He was invited as scientific session speaker in the area of statistics and data analysis for the LatMath 2022 conference sponsored by the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM) at UCLA, and was also an invited speaker for the INFORMS Teaching Effectiveness Colloquium in 2021, which featured speakers from business and engineering schools who address different aspects of incorporating and assessing effective teaching techniques in OR/MS/analytics undergraduate or graduate curriculum.

His general areas of interest include data mining and machine learning, computational linear algebra and optimization, and data science education. His work has been presented at international and national conference meetings including SIAM annual meetings, the International Conference for High Performance Computing, the IEEE International Conference of the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, the IEEE International Conference in Machine Learning and Applications, and INFORMS annual meeting. Sanchez-Arias is a member of SIAM, IEEE, IEOM, ACM and INFORMS. 

  • Outstanding Service Award, IEOM, 2022
  • Ablaze Excellence in Teaching Award, Florida Polytechnic University, 2020
  • Best Paper Award in the Data Analytics and Big Data Track, Industrial Engineering and Operations Management (IEOM) 6th North American Conference, 2021
  • Outstanding Ph.D. Dissertation Award, The University of Texas at El Paso, 2014
  • Academic Excellence Award, The University of Texas at El Paso, 2013
  • Ph.D. in Computational Science, The University of Texas at El Paso, 2013
  • M.S. in Computational Science, The University of Texas at El Paso, 2011
  • B.S. in Mathematics, Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia, 2008
  • Supervised and Unsupervised Learning
  • Data Mining and Text Mining
  • Numerical Optimization
  • Data Science Education
  • Member, Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) Education Outreach Committee, 2020-current
  • Conference Associate Chair, IEOM North America Conference, 2022
  • Chair, Curriculum and Assessment Committee Florida Poly Data Science and Business Analytics, 2018-present
  • Member, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), 2018-present
  • Member, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), 2011-present
  • Dials, J., Demirel, D., Sanchez-Arias, R., Halic, T., Kruger, U., De, S., & Gromski, M. A. (2023). “Skill-level classification and performance evaluation for endoscopic sleeve gastroplasty”. Surgical Endoscopy, 1-12.
  • Dewey, J., Ingram, C., & Sanchez-Arias, R. (2022) “A Supervised Learning Approach to Assessing Accounts Receivable Risk in Small-to-Medium Enterprises”. Proceedings of the 7th North American Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management (IEOM), pp. 1805-1815.
  • Dewey, J., Kindle, K., Vadlamani, S., & Sanchez-Arias, R. (2021). “State Marijuana Laws and Traffic Fatalities”. Review of Regional Studies, 51(3), 246-265.
  • Sanchez-Arias, R., Batista, R., Nicklas, L. C., & Akioyamen, P. (2021) “Dimensionality Reduction and Text Mining for Smart Content Filtering of an Online Health Forum”. Proceedings of the 6th North American Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management (IEOM), pp. 2367-2374.
  • Batista, R. W., & Sanchez-Arias, R. (2020). “A Methodology for Estimating Hospital Intensive Care Unit Length Of Stay Using Novel Machine Learning Tools”. 19th IEEE International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA), pp. 827-832.
  • Akioyamen, P., Nicklas, L. C., & Sanchez-Arias, R. (2020). “A Framework for Intelligent Navigation Using Latent Dirichlet Allocation on Reddit Posts About Opiates”. Proceedings of the 2020 the 4th International Conference on Compute and Data Analysis, pp. 190-196.
  • Sanchez-Arias, R., & Batista, R. W. (2019). “Unsupervised Learning on the Health and Retirement Study using Geometric Data Analysis”. 18th IEEE International Conference On Machine Learning And Applications (ICMLA), pp. 335-340.
  • Goss, Q., Akbaş, M. İ., Jaimes, L. G., & Sanchez-Arias, R. (2019). “Street Network Generation with Adjustable Complexity Using K-Means Clustering”. 2019 IEEE SoutheastCon, pp. 1-6.
  • Aguilar-Bonavides, C., Sanchez-Arias, R., & Lanzas, C. (2014). “Accurate Prediction Of Major Histocompatibility Complex Class II Epitopes By Sparse Representation via l1-minimization”. BioData Mining, 7(1), 1-14.
  • Sanchez, R., Argáez, M., & Guillén, P. (2011). “Sparse Representation via l1-minimization for Underdetermined Systems in Classification of Tumors With Gene Expression Data”. Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, pp. 3362-3366.