Luís M. A. Bettencourt is the Pritzker Director of the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation at the University of Chicago and Professor of Ecology and Evolution. In addition, he is an External Professor of Complex Systems at the Santa Fe Institute and since March 2021 member of the External Faculty at the Hub.

Luis conducts interdisciplinary research on complex systems and his main research insterest are the areeas of science of cities, synthetic cognition and science of science and technology. He published over 100 peer-reviewed publications in theoretical and statistical physics, epidemiology, computational neuroscience, information theory, science of science and technology and urban studies. His research has been featured in leading media venues, such as the New York Times, Nature, Wired, New Scientist, and the Smithsonian.