Dr. Eduardo Ortega-Barria
National Secretary, National Secretariat for Science, Technology and Innovation
He was born in Sorera, Panama. He completed his medical studies at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara, Mexico. He then did his specialty in Pediatrics at the National Institute of Pediatrics in Mexico City and then his subspecialty in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Mexico „Federico Gomez” in Mexico City.
Between 1987 and 1993 he undertook postgraduate training in tropical medicine and parasitology, focusing on research in the cellular and molecular biology of parasites. Trypanosoma cruzi, Giardia lamblia And Pneumocystis carinii Tufts University School of Medicine/New England Medical Center, Division of Geographic Medicine and Infectious Diseases, and between 1988 and 1993 served as Instructor in Medicine, New England Medical Center, Boston Massachusetts.
In 1990, he received the Massachusetts Infectious Diseases Society’s „Maxwell Finland” Young Researcher of the Year Award.
Between 1993 and 1998, he completed postdoctoral training in pediatric infectious diseases at Lucille Salter Packard Children’s Hospital, Stanford University’s Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and a postdoctoral fellowship in cellular and molecular biology. Toxoplasma gondii in Microbiology and Immunology, Stanford University School of Medicine.
From 1998 to 2003, he held various leadership positions at the National Secretariat of the Florida State University-Panama’s Gorgas Memorial Institute for Health Studies, Institute for Advanced Scientific Research and High Technology Services (Indicasat in Spanish). Science, Technology and Innovation, Panama, and at the Pediatric Hospital of the Social Security Institute, Panama. From 2000-2007 he was an Associate Scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. From 2001 to 2013, he was Assistant Professor, Department of Microbiology and Tropical Medicine, George Washington University, Washington, DC. Dr. Ortega-Barria has authored 98 review articles, 30 textbook chapters on parasitology, pediatrics, infectious diseases, and vaccines, and is a co-inventor of 2 patents and 2 provisional patent applications in parasitology in the United States.
He served as Vice President and Director of Clinical Affairs and Research and Clinical Development of GlaxoSmithKline Vaccines for Latin America and the Caribbean from 2006 to 2020. Since 2018 he has been a researcher at the National Research Institute of Panama. He currently serves as the National Secretary of the National Secretariat for Science, Technology and Innovation.
