Horacio Samaniego

Even though I was born in Chile, I spent my childhood in Paris and Amsterdam. Earlier in the days... I studied flute with Alejandro Lavanderos at the conservatory in Chile and later in Amsterdam.

Then, I studied biology at the Catholic University of Chile in Santiago where I graduated in 2000 with a bachelor under the supervision of Prof. Pablo A. Marquet.
In 2001, I moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico to work on my PhD. in biology at the University of New Mexico (UNM), where I worked in the landscape ecology laboratory of Prof. Bruce T. Milne. After that, I worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the Computer Science Department of UNM with Dr. Melanie E. Moses and in the Center for Nonlinear Studies at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA.

Since 2008, I am assistant professor at the Institute of Silviculture in the School of Forestry of the Universidad Austral de Chile in Valdivia. Here, I teach and research on conservation biology, landscape, urban dynamics and complex systems.

Since then, I went back to New Mexico to spend a couple of years in the Center for Non Linear Studies (CNLS) of the Los Alamos National Laboratories (LANL) as a postdoctoral researcher up to mid 2011. Most of my research there was on complex systems, particularly on urban dynamics with Luis Bettencourt at CNLS and the Santa Fe Institute.

I share my life with three wonderful girls: Clio, Maia, and Dominique + Fragola & Mango our furry newfies, as well as chickens and rabbits.

I have recently started to teach flute at the JS Bach music school in Valdivia, Chile.