Doctoral student, alumnus take top technology prizes

Two FIU innovators were recently recognized as Technology Leaders of the Year by the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce.

FIU engineering doctoral student Fausto Fleites ’09 was awarded Top Technology Student of the Year and alumnus Albert Santalo MBA ’97, president and CEO of CareCloud in Miami, won The Best Up & Coming Technology Innovator prize. They were honored at the annual Technology Leaders of the Year awards ceremony at Jungle Island.

Fleites recently completed his first year as a Ph.D. student in FIU’s Computer Science program. He was recognized for his work as the leader of the graduate students working on the Florida Public Hurricane Loss Model, a project funded by the state of Florida that projects hurricane losses incurred by insurance companies. It is the only public model whose assumptions and calculations are transparent and open to public analysis. Other models are proprietary.

Fleites has been involved with the project since 2006. The following year, he began leading the graduate students working on the computer science component of the model. Finance professor Shahid Hamid is the principal investigator of the Pubic Hurricane Loss Model, and Computer Science professor Shu-Ching Chen is the co-principal investigator.

“We have to take very, very seriously the work we do because the model we provide affects people’s lives,” he said. “Many people work very hard on this model. The award recognizes not only my work on the project, but the work of Dr. Shu –Ching Chen and other students who are involved.”

Cindy Cerna ’10, who just graduated from the Mechanical and Materials Engineering Department, was a finalist for the student award. She is entering the University of Michigan to earn a doctoral degree in biomedical engineering.

Santalo founded CareCloud in 2009 with the vision of becoming a healthcare information technology leader focused on eliminating the waste and inefficiency in the healthcare industry today. Previously, Santalo was founder and chairman of Avisena, a software-enabled revenue cycle management company in the healthcare industry where he worked from 2004 to 2008.

He is the recipient of the 2004 FIU Alumni Association Charles E. Perry Visionary Award for outstanding alumni and was inducted to the FIU Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame in 2006.