Dr. Julian Ruiz-Saenz is the former President of the Colombian Society for Virology and currently is a Full-time professor at the Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia and has been classified with the highest level as “Senior Researcher” from the Colombian Ministry of Sciences and Technology. He obtained his DVM degree from the University of Antioquia in 2004, and master’s degree in Basic Biomedical Sciences with an emphasis in Virology and a PhD in Animal Health with an emphasis in Viruses in 2012. In 2021, he took a post-doctoral visiting position at the World Reference Center for Emerging Viruses and Arboviruses (WRCEVA) at the University of Texas Medical Branch-TMB (USA) in ABSL-3/BSL-3 training under Dr. Scott Weaver mentee. Dr. Ruiz-Saenz focus of research is the molecular characterization of Animal and zoonotic viruses, trying to understand interspecies virus Jump. He has been working on areas related to the evolutive, phylogenetical and Structural characterization of Viruses from domestic animals and its role in human diseases. Also, he supports projects focused on the study of the co-circulation of several Arboviruses such as Madariaga, Encephalitis, Dengue, Zika and Chikungunya in the Colombian context.
Dr. Ruiz-Saenz is active member of the American Society for Virology-ASV, World Society for Virology-WSV, the Global Virus Network-GVN, International Veterinary Vaccinology Network, and Colombian Society for Virology -ACV. He serves as a reviewer of several journals, including but not limited to: PNAS, Archives of virology, PLoS neglected tropical diseases, PloS one, Preventive veterinary medicine, Veterinary research, Viruses among others. Also, as strong supported of the Open Access movement, Dr. Ruiz-Saenz takes editorial roles in several high impact Open Access journals: Academic Editor in PloS ONE, Academic Editor for MDPI GENES and VIRUSES; and for the Frontiers editorial: Associate Editor in Emerging Tropical Diseases, Guest Associate Editor in Disease Prevention and Control Policy, Review Editor in Virology and Review Editor in Veterinary and Zoonotic Infection. Finally, Dr. Ruiz-Saenz has published several papers and book chapters in indexed Journals.