Santiago has a PhD in Artificial Intelligence. He was for a long time the only Spanish computer go researcher. He contributed to the development of Monte-Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) since its conception and took part in computer go competitions from 2009 to 2012. This at the time not mainstream field is, since the victory of Alpha Go in 2016, recognized as paramount today. He also applied MCTS in Human Genetics. He co-owns a patent for that work, worked in computer vision and robotics since the 90s when he was granted a computer vision patent. He authored many papers and is an active member of the free software community, especially as the project leader of Jazz, the efficient AI platform.