Dr. Eduardo Ortega-Barría

National Secretary of Science, Technology and Innovation

He was born in La Chorrera, Panama, where he attended Pedro Pablo Sánchez Secondary School.
He completed his medical studies at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara, Mexico. He subsequently completed a specialty in Pediatrics at the National Institute of Pediatrics in Mexico City and a subspecialty in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the Federico Gómez Children’s Hospital in Mexico City.

Between 1987 and 1993, he completed postdoctoral training in Tropical Medicine and Parasitology, focusing on research in the Cellular and Molecular Biology of parasites, including Trypanosoma cruzi, Giardia lamblia, and Pneumocystis carinii, at Tufts University School of Medicine / New England Medical Center, Division of Geographic Medicine and Infectious Diseases. He also served as an Instructor in Medicine between 1988 and 1993 in the Department of Medicine at the New England Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts (United States).

In 1990, he received the “Maxwell Finland” Young Investigator of the Year Award from the Massachusetts Infectious Diseases Society.

From 1998 to 2003, he held various leadership positions in Panama, specifically at the Gorgas Memorial Institute for Health Studies at Florida State University, Panama, the Institute for Advanced Scientific Research and High Technology Services (Indicasat AIP), the National Secretariat of Science, Technology, and Innovation, Panama, and the Pediatric Specialty Hospital of the Social Security Fund (Panama). From 2000 to 2007, he was a scientific associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. From 2001 to 2013, he was an adjunct professor in the Department of Microbiology and Tropical Medicine at George Washington University, Washington, DC.

Dr. Ortega-Barría is the author of more than 100 research articles, 38 textbook chapters on parasitology, pediatrics, infectious diseases, and vaccines, and is the co-inventor of two patents and two provisional patent applications in parasitology in the United States. Between 2018 and 2021, he was a researcher at the National Research System of Panama.
During the acute phase of the pandemic, he was a member of the COVID-19 Advisory Committee in Panama and is currently an advisor on the COVID-19 vaccination strategy.

Between 2006 and 2020, he was Vice President and Director of Medical Affairs and Clinical Vaccine Research and Development for Latin America and the Caribbean at GlaxoSmithKline, where under his leadership, vaccines were developed against rotavirus, pneumococcus, human papillomavirus, combination vaccines, meningococcus, and herpes zoster.

Between 2006 and 2020, he was Vice President and Director of Medical Affairs and Clinical Vaccine Research and Development for Latin America and the Caribbean at GlaxoSmithKline, where under his leadership, vaccines were developed against rotavirus, pneumococcus, human papillomavirus, combination vaccines, meningococcus, and herpes zoster.