Jhonatan Henao Vasquez, PhD’25
Jhonatan Henao Vasquez, PhD’25, immigrated to the U.S. from Columbia with his family when he was 2 years old and he’s the first in his family to attend college.
At 14, Vasquez was hospitalized for two weeks with swine flu that put him into a coma. The experience inspired him to become a doctor, but he found his true passion was research.
I pursued my PhD because I wanted to be a leader in science, making an impact at a company.
Jhonatan Henao Vasquez, PhD’25
“What I really like is the hands-on experience, using your mind to troubleshoot and figure what can be done to improve the process,” he said. “And so, I switched gears from (becoming a doctor) and leaned more into biomedical research,” he said.
Vasquez appreciated that in BU’s Program in Biomedical Sciences he had the freedom to explore different labs.
“Infectious diseases really interested me, and I rotated in viral-focused labs like the Center for Biomedical Mass Spectrometry and the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories. He found his research focus at the Pulmonary Center under Matthew Jones, PhD, associate professor of pulmonary, allergy, sleep & critical care medicine, and Alan Fine, professor of medicine and director of the Stem Cell Biology Program at the Pulmonary Center.
“They were more immunology focused, looking at the lung airway, in the host sense, not just how does influenza work when it infects the cell, but how does the lung respond to infection,” Vasquez said.
For his research, Vasquez received the Ruth L. Kirschstein Predoctoral Individual National Research Service Award from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health. He wants to reenter the biotech industry where he had worked before entering BU.
“I pursued my PhD because I wanted to be a leader in science, making an impact at a company,” he said.