Santiago is Visiting Associate Professor at Stanford University's Department of Economics and King Center on Global Development, and Associate Professor and MPP director in the Economics Department at Universidad del Rosario.
He holds a PhD in Economics from Stanford University and a B.A. in Economics and B.S. in Mathematics from Universidad de los Andes.
His research interests are in Development and Environmental Economics. In particular, he is interested in how economic development and governance affects natural resources. To overcome data availability limitations, he uses satellite data and machine learning. He has studied topics of illegal mining, deforestation, eco-tourism, air pollution, and payments for ecosystem services.