Juan Pablo Torres
Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile
Pediatric Infectious Diseases specialist, Associate Professor in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Chile in the Department of Pediatrics and the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Children’s Hospital Luis Calvo Mackenna in Santiago. Chief of the Research Unit (2014-2017) at the same hospital, Coordinator of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Fellowship and Sub Director of the Department of Pediatrics, Hospital Luis Calvo Mackenna, Faculty of Medicine, University of Chile and Vice Director of Research (2009-2017) and Academic Director (2017-2018) at Clinica Las Condes in Santiago, Chile.
He received his medical degree from University of Chile, Pediatrician at the same university and followed by a PhD Program and a fellowship in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Chile and a Research Fellowship and Postdoctoral studies in Pediatric Infectious Diseases in Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, University of Texas (2007-2008) under the mentorship of Dr. Octavio Ramilo and Dr. George McCracken Jr., in the field of respiratory infections (respiratory syncytial virus, influenza, rhinovirus, Mycoplasma pneumoniae). He has 65 peer-reviewed ISI manuscripts and 5 book chapters mainly in the field of respiratory viral infections in the immunocompromised children, bacterial infections in children with cancer, molecular diagnosis of pediatric infectious diseases and other bacterial infections in the immunocompetent children.
Currently, he leads and participates in eight FONDECYT projects (government founded grants, three of them as Principal Investigator) in bacterial and viral infections in the immunocompromised and immunocompetent children and Helicobacter pylori infection. Member of national scientific societies (Sociedad Chilena de Infectología) and international scientific societies (Society of Pediatric Research (SPR), USA; European Society of Pediatric Infectious Diseases (ESPID), Sociedad Latinoamericana de Infectología Pediática (SLIPE) y International Society of Infectious Diseases (ISID). He was accepted as an Emerging Leader in 2017 at the International Society of Infectious Diseases (ISID) and member of the Board of the Sociedad Latinoamericana de Infectología Pediátrica (SLIPE 2020-2022) and member of the Committee in Immunization of SLIPE (2020-2022). Member of the Board of the Sociedad Chilena de Infectología (2021-2022). He worked for 3 years in the Clinical Science Study Group at the Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico (FONDECYT), CONICYT, Chile. He served as Councilor in the Fondo Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo en Salud (FONIS) CONICYT, Chile, in representation of the Ministry of Health. Member of the founding group and the Committee of the first Joint Degree Program between the University of Chile and the Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Japan (Program of PhD and Medical Subspecialty).
He currently serves as Director of Innovation of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Chile (2018-2022), leading among other projects the “Engineering and Health Initiative”, with the joint participation of the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Chile, in order to promote artificial intelligence, big data, medical informatics applied to Health. Member of the National Council for School re-opening (Ministry of Education and Ministry of Health, Chile).