Dr. Alejandro Gimenez Santana is the Executive Director of the Newark Public Safety Collaborative (NPSC) and Associate Professor of Professional Practice at the Rutgers School of Criminal Justice. Before joining Rutgers, he served as a consultant for the World Bank regional office in Bogotá, Colombia, and the Inter-American Development Bank in Montevideo, Uruguay, and as a research analyst at the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

Dr. Santana has secured over $6M in external funding in support of the NPSC, Rutgers-Newark's flagship public safety initiative. His research centers on environmental criminology, spatial analysis of neighborhood crime conditions, and the co-production of public safety through data-informed, community-led responses. He leads applied research and collaborative initiatives that bring together community organizations, law enforcement, and local government to co-develop place-based crime prevention strategies across the United States, Latin America, and Europe.

He advises a range of international organizations and national nonprofits, including the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), and the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), translating data and evidence-based practices into community-led interventions that empower residents and organizations as co-producers of public safety. He teaches courses in Geographic Information Systems for Crime Mapping and Data Analysis, with a strong emphasis on applied research. He holds a Ph.D. in Global Affairs from Rutgers University-Newark.