PhD Career Stories: Government Research with Efrain Garcia, PhD
PhD Career Stories: Government Research with Efrain Garcia, PhD
Thursday, December 5
10:00am
Register for the Zoom link here!
Dr. Efrain Garcia, PhD, is a Health Scientist/Project Officer at the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). His duties include overseeing and managing various multi-million dollar Government contracts for the advanced development and procurement of medical countermeasures for chemical threats. In addition, Dr. Garcia managed various efforts to develop therapeutics to treat high-risk and hospitalized patients with COVID-19. Dr. Garcia have been involved in these efforts since April 2020 through Operation Warp Speed initially, followed by the Countermeasures Acceleration Group, and HCORE.
Prior to joining BARDA, Dr. Garcia was the Branch Chief of International Partnerships in the Division of International Health Security (DIHS) within HHS, where he was in charge of supporting the organization’s efforts to promote and engage in strategic bilateral and multilateral collaborations with international partners to advance science-based public health and medical emergency preparedness and response. Dr. Garcia also led the interagency Chemical Requirements Working Group for HHS as a AAAS Fellow, where he developed medical countermeasure requirements to inform the US. Government on desired medical countermeasures for chemical agents.
Prior to his AAAS fellowship, Dr. Garcia was a Research Fellow at the Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science. In this role, he studied the effects of prenatal alcohol and cocaine exposure on brain development with state of the art imaging technology. Dr. Garcia received his PhD in Pharmacology from Vanderbilt University, where he investigated the role of serotonin receptors in the mechanism of action of hallucinogenic drugs.