Maria Elena Bottazzi
Associate Dean, National School of Tropical Medicine (USA)
Maria Elena Bottazzi, PhD is Associate Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine, Professor of Pediatrics and Co-director of Texas Children’s Center for Vaccine Development at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. She is an internationally recognized vaccinologist with more than two decades of experience advancing product development partnerships. She has built sustainable biotechnology capacity building alliances and successfully transitioned several neglected tropical disease (NTDs) and emerging disease vaccines from bench to clinical trials.
As global thought-leader she has received national and international highly regarded awards, has more than 150 scientific papers and participated in more than 250 conferences worldwide. She is Member of the National Academy of Science of Honduras and an Emerging Leader in Health and Medicine Scholar of the National Academy of Medicine in the US. Dr. Bottazzi currently serves as Co-chair of the New Vaccines and Therapeutics Taskforce of the Lancet Commission on COVID-19. She is also a Fellow of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH), the Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM), the Leshner Leadership Institute Public Engagement and Sr. Fellow of the American Leadership Forum (ALF). In August 2020, Forbes LATAM selected Dr. Bottazzi as one of 100 Most Powerful Women in Central America.
Dr. Bottazzi obtained her bachelor’s degree in Microbiology and Clinical Chemistry from the National Autonomous University of Honduras and a doctorate in Molecular Immunology and Experimental Pathology from the University of Florida. Her post-doctoral training in Cellular Biology was completed at University of Miami and Pennsylvania.