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Sandro Reia

  • Postdoctoral Research Fellow

    Contact Info

    Name
    Dr. Sandro Martinelli Reia
    Job Title
    Postdoctoral Research Fellow
    Website
    Personal Website
    Office Number
    Exploratory Hall, Room 2111

    Affiliations

    Departments

    Research Areas

    • Complex systems theory
    • Human Mobility and Travel Behavior Modeling
    • Geospatial Science
    • Transportation Geography and Network Science

    Education

    Ph.D. in Sciences, University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil, 2015

    M.Sc. in Sciences, University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil, 2011

    B.Sc. in Physics, University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil, 2008

    About

    I am a physicist and computational urban scientist at George Mason University working at the intersection of complex systems, urban dynamics, and scalable simulation. My work combines agent-based modeling, geospatial data analysis and high-performance computing to build end-to-end pipelines that generate synthetic populations, simulate daily activity chains, and evaluate how infrastructure and policy interventions shape mobility, access, and resilience.

    Current Research

    My current research at GMU centers on building and validating large-scale urban “patterns-of-life” simulation systems that integrate open geographic data (e.g., road networks and points of interest), demographic synthesis, and scalable computation. Methodologically, I focus on:

    • Synthetic population generation and realistic household/work/school assignment
    • Activity chain and trip-chaining models to represent urban function
    • Scalable agent-based simulation (HPC-ready workflows, large agent counts)
    • Urban resilience and recovery modeling, including heterogeneous recovery dynamics after major hazards
    • Comparative urban analytics across many U.S. metropolitan areas using mobility surveys and high-resolution spatial data

    Selected Publications

    Reia, Sandro M., et al. "Spatial structure of city population growth." Nature communications 13.1 (2022): 5931.

    Reia, Sandro M., et al. "Domestic migration and city rank dynamics." Nature Cities 2.1 (2025): 38-46.

    Reia, Sandro M., André C. Amado, and José F. Fontanari. "Agent-based models of collective intelligence." Physics of life reviews 31 (2019): 320-331.

    Reia, Sandro M., P. Suresh C. Rao, and Satish V. Ukkusuri. "Modeling the dynamics and spatial heterogeneity of city growth." Npj Urban Sustainability 2.1 (2022): 31.

    Reia, Sandro M., et al. "Towards Universal Urban Patterns-of-Life Simulation." arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.22099 (2026).

    Reia, Sandro M., et al. "Function and form of US cities." Computers, Environment and Urban Systems 116 (2025): 102221.

     

    For a complete list of publications, please check: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=pt-BR&user=8T1-mIQAAAAJ

    Contact Info

    Name
    Dr. Sandro Martinelli Reia
    Job Title
    Postdoctoral Research Fellow
    Website
    Personal Website
    Office Number
    Exploratory Hall, Room 2111

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