Dr. Ivan Martinez is an Associate professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Cell Biology at West Virginia University (WVU) as well as the WVU Cancer Institute. Originally from Mexico City, he finished his undergraduate education with honors from The National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He completed his Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry at the University of Pittsburgh in Dr. Saleem Khan’s Lab studying the interactions between Human Papillomavirus infections and microRNAs. Dr. Martinez continued his training as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Genetics at Yale University School of Medicine in Dr. Daniel DiMaio’s Lab in collaboration with Dr. Joan Steitz’s Lab studying the importance of microRNAs in cellular growth arrest. After his training, he was recruited at WVU in 2013.

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       Dr. Martinez has been invited to present his research at prestigious institutions such as Harvard University, University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), at Gottingen University-Max Planck Institutes in Germany, and the National Institute of Genomic Medicine (Instituto Nacional de Medicine Genomics) in Mexico. He is also involved in the organization of International Meetings such as the Workshop on Long Non-coding RNAs at the 2021 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, as well as the 2022 Keystone Symposia “Small Regulatory RNAs: From Bench to Bedside” in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Finally, Dr. Martinez is a member of the World Health Organization (WHO) COVID-19 Animal Model Group since 2021.