Dr. Jorge Silveyra 
Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Education
B.S., Universidad Autonoma del Estado del Mexico M.S.
Ph.D., University of North Texas
Teaching Interests
I love to teach a wide range of computer science classes. I have had the pleasure of teaching all levels of computer science classes to assisting students in their REU (capstone) projects. I also have taught multiple elective classes such as Natural Language Processing and Modeling and Simulation. I love to introduce my students to new and challenging topics in computer science.
I am also interested in creating courses that can help non-computer scientists to learn computer science concepts in a friendly and useful way. My goal is to teach them enough information for them to be able to create their own programs and understand the possibilities and limitations of using computers. One of the ways we have used data analytics in class is to figure out the best times to tweet. Another exercise was to analyze Star Wars movie databases to determine the amount of screen time characters get in each movie and which ones appear less frequently.
Research Interests
My research predominantly involves computational epidemiology, modeling and simulation, and computational immunology, which are multidisciplinary fields that use computer science, mathematics, public health, chemistry and biochemistry. Specifically, I am interested in investigating how much diseases are affected by a person’s physiology versus by their social and behavioral characteristics. In other words, I am interested in knowing the role an individual’s immune system and the way he behaves impacts the way an epidemic spreads.
Lately, I have been expanding my research to include ways to use natural language processing (computers that read human language) and machine learning (the science of getting computers to act without being programmed) to address issues related to epidemiology and political science. These types of programs look for patterns in text that might not be obvious to humans reading the text.
Other Interests
I love to play videogames (Zelda, Mario, Pokémon… too many to list them all) and you will probably see me at the gym one day (say hi!).
Student Research/Conference Collaboration
2017: Jalal Khan. Muhlentour. Poster Presentation at the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges (CCSC-NE) in Albany, NY.
Recent Publications, Presentations and Abstracts
Reyes-Silveyra, Jorge and Mikler, Armin R. "Modeling immune response and its effect on infectious disease outbreak dynamics". Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling, 2016.
Christopher Herrick and Jorge Reyes Silveyra, “The Shifting Rhetoric of Chinese Foreign Policy”, Northeastern Political Science Association Annual Conference, Philadelphia, November 9-11, 2017.
