Dr. Juan Pablo de Rivero Vaccari graduated summa cum laude with a B.S. in Biology from Florida International University, where he was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society. He then pursued his Ph.D. in Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Miami in the laboratory of Dr. Robert W.  Keane and his post-doctoral fellowship in neurotrauma at The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis in the laboratory of Dr. W. Dalton Dietrich.  He also graduated with an M.S. in Business Analytics from the Miami Herbert Business School of the University of Miami. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Neurological Surgery and for the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis. He is also a Distinguished Faculty member of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and Aging, the Neuroscience Graduate Program and the Cellular Physiology and Molecular Biophysics Graduate Program at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, as well as at the faculty of the Translational and Clinical Oncology Research Program at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center. His research focuses on understanding early inflammatory events corresponding to the innate immune response mediated by the inflammasome in central nervous system injury and diseases such as traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and inflammaging.