Ricardo José Silva Bustillos

Dr. Ricardo Silva is a pracademic (practitioner-academic), with 20+ years of academic experience in various countries.

At Villanova, he is professor of the Health Information Technology graduate certificate. His research line at Villanova is focused on 4th generation, evolutionary artificial neural networks. He also has an active collaboration with L2C Partners, an outsourced technology transfer and commercialization service for educational institutions and research centers.

As a practitioner, Dr. Silva is founder and chief innovation officer of Alluriam, a disruptive startup in healthcare, and he is also senior consultant for the World Health Organization, working on the development of the Universal Health Coverage Compendium, the Medical Device Information System and the One Health Tool, all expert systems to support the global provision of care.

As a trailblazer, Dr. Silva has been leading healthcare digital transformation in various countries and on various fronts, from telemedicine to public policy. Dr. Silva enjoys his work, and he believes in the transformational power of education. He teaches by practice and practices by teaching. Prior to Villanova, he was President and Provost of the “17 de Julio” Community College in Ecuador, where he established academic-industrial partnerships with ten Fortune 500 companies and secured over $20M of funding for the institution.

Dr. Silva holds a BE in Electronics, a MS in Biomedical Engineering from Simon Bolivar University in Venezuela, a PhD in Integrative Biosciences from Penn State University, and is completing an EMBA from Crummer Business School at Rollings College.