Daniel A.M. Villela is a Senior Research Scientist at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (FIOCRUZ) and is currently a Visiting Research Scholar at the Center for Health and Wellbeing (CHW) in the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He is a professor in the graduate program of Epidemiology at FIOCRUZ and is also affiliated with graduate programs in Computational Biology and Parasitic Biology. He held the position of Chair of the Program of Scientific Computing (PROCC) at FIOCRUZ from 2017 to 2023 and served as the Deputy Coordinator of the Program of Epidemiology from 2021 to 2023. He earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2005. Dr. Villela served on the Brazilian Advisory Committee on Immunization from 2021 to 2023 and is a member of the advisory council of the City of Rio de Janeiro. In 2022, the book he co-edited, titled "Covid-19 in Brazil: Epidemiological Scenarios and Health Surveillance" (in portuguese) was selected as one of the best books of the year in the Health and Sciences category (Abeu Prize and Jabuti).

His research interests are with Epidemiology and Ecology for Public Health, with a focus on several key areas, including vector-borne diseases such as malaria and arboviruses, as well as SARS-CoV-2 infections. Recent works include a comprehensive spatio-temporal analysis of malaria transmission in the Amazon basin, studies aimed at understanding the population ecology of mosquito species that are vectors of infectious diseases such as dengue, and large-scale studies evaluating the effectiveness of vaccinations against severe cases of COVID-19.