Dr. Manuel Villalón
Senior Investigator
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Dr. Manuel J. Villalón is a certified teacher in Natural Science and Biology and Full Professor at the Department of Physiology of the Faculty of Biological Science at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Dr. Villalón obtained his professional title from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. He also completed a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Bioengineering at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. After his Ph.D., he finished a postdoctoral fellowship funded by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in a joint program between the Children´s Orthopedics Hospital and the University of Washington.
Dr. Villalón has been awarded and directed programs and projects from Fondecyt, World Health Organization and Rockefeller Foundation, and has been an Investigator in projects like Nucleus in Mollecular Structural Biology from Millennium Scientific Initiative and an interdisciplinary project of Biomedical Imaging in obesity: from cellular mechanisms to clinical applications between the Faculty of Biological Sciences, Medical School and the School of Engineering.
He has published numerous articles in high impact journals in physiology and has contributed to the scientific training of numerous of undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate researchers in the field of cellular physiology.
His research focuses on the molecular mechanism that control mucociliary transport in the airways and the deleterious effect of chronic inflammatory disease, like asthma, to the respiratory system physiology. The research is expected to contribute to the early detection, progression and prevention of this disease, through the understanding of the molecular mechanism, at epithelium level, that contribute to the onset of this disease.