Hector Aguilar, PhD, to chair MIMG and the College of Life Sciences

MIMG is thrilled to announce that Hector Aguilar, PhD, has been appointed as the chair of the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine and the College of Life Sciences at UCLA. This appointment will take effect on July 1, 2025.

Dr. Aguilar is a Professor of Virology in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology and an Associate Vice-Provost for Research and Innovation at Cornell University. He received a BS degree in Biochemical Engineering from Instituto Tecnologico de Tepic, Mexico, a MS degree in Biology from California State University, Los Angeles, and a PhD degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from University of Southern California, where he was introduced to the world of viruses. He received post-doctoral training in Virology at UCLA under the mentoring of Dr. Benhur Lee, and then became an assistant professor at Washington State University (WSU).

At UCLA he pioneered the identification of cell receptors for Nipah virus (NiV) and Hendra virus (HeV) and began to establish important new tools including conformational antibodies to study NiV and HeV entry into mammalian host cells, and cryo-EM to study viral structures and assembly/exit from infected cells. His lab encompasses both basic and translational research. He has adopted technologies previously foreign to the field of Virology to the study of enveloped viruses, including Raman Spectroscopy, Super-resolution Microscopy, and Flow Virometry. His studies on viral glycoproteins and their roles in host cell entry and viral assembly inform novel translational ways to develop vaccines and antivirals. 

Dr. Aguilar has a long history of service including: Director of Graduate Studies of the WSU Immunology and Infectious Diseases PhD program; member of the WSU and Cornell CVM Research Councils; member of the WSU Internal Governance Board for NIH T32 post-doctoral program; member of the American Society for Virology (ASV) Education Committee; Ad-hoc member of ~20 NIH study sections; Standing Member of VIR-A NIH study section; chair of the American Society of Microbiology Committee for Minority Education; chair of the American Society of Virology Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee; chair of the Cornell CVM Diversity Committee; member of the Cornell CVM Research Council; member of the Cornell presidential postdoctoral fellowship committee; member of the BBS PhD Admissions committee, director of the Cornell Program for Achieving Career Excellence that serves biomedical junior faculty and URM post-docs, chair of ~18 PhD student thesis committees; member of >40 PhD student committees; and most recently president elect of the American Society of Virology, among other service roles.

We thank Dr. Jerome A. Zack for his three decades of outstanding service and leadership at UCLA. We also thank the search committee members, whose names are listed below, for their dedication and commitment to the search process.

Department of MIMG Search Committee:

• Co-Chair Amander Clark, Professor, Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology
• Co-Chair Siavash Kurdistani, Professor, Department of Biological Chemistry
• Amanda Freise: Academic Administrator, Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics
• Maria Garcia-Lloret: Professor, Department of Pediatrics
• Isla Garraway: Professor, Department of Urology
• Patricia Johnson: Distinguished Professor, Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics
• Beth Lazazzera: Associate Professor, Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics
• Alvaro Sagasti: Professor, Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology
• Stephen Smale: Distinguished Professor, Department of Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics Otto Yang: Professor, Department of Medicine
• Otto Yang: Professor, Departments of Medicine and Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics
• Jasmine Zhou: Professor, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine