Dr. Villegas is a Professor of Marketing and Associate Dean of the College of Business and Management at UIS. Dr. Villegas' research interest focuses on how consumers' cognitive and affective processes interact when exposed to different types of communications, particularly when this information is used to make important decisions. In this topic, he has studied tourists' responses to hurricane warning messages, effects of vaccine-related and fear-inducing messages, messages of solidarity after a terrorist attack, and more recently, how patient engagement impacts resistance to anti-vaccination messages found in social media, and the portrayal of emotions and cultural symbols in COVID-19 related commercial messages. He holds a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin.