Dr. Richard A. McDonald is the lead biomedical scientist at the Global Health Science Institute® and an Affiliate Faculty member in Chemical & Materials Engineering and Industrial Engineering at New Mexico State University. A U.S. Army veteran (PROFIS Officer) and former field scientist with the 520th Theater Army Medical Laboratory (biowarfare subgroup), he held scientific roles at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. He served as a Congressional Special Project Officer with the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs. He conducted HIV-1 gp160 research at the Henry M. Jackson Foundation and contributed to primate vaccine studies at the Primate Research Institute at Holloman Air Force Base. His work spans cancer biology, biomedical engineering, and molecular virology, with expertise in synthetic biology, strategic metal crystallization, and vaccine design. He has received NIH, NSF, and DoD awards and has published in journals such as the Journal of Virology, Military Medicine, and European Journal of Biochemistry, and was invited to author two chapters in Methods in Molecular Medicine (Humana Press). He pioneered synthetic biology for scalable downstream HIV-1 protease production, developed a 24-hour ion-to-crystal strategic metal process (ambient temperature & pressure), and field-pioneered genetic multiplexing using Coxiella burnetii, Yersinia pestis, Bacillus anthracis, and Brucella melitensis.

Dr. Armando Varela-Ramirez is a Research Scientist and lab director at The Border Biomedical Research Center, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX, USA. He obtained his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from New Mexico State University in the United States in 1998. From 1998 to 2000, he was also a postdoctoral fellow at Texas A&M AgriLife Research. Dr. Varela-Ramirez's current research interests primarily include anticancer drug discovery. Dr. Varela-Ramirez's expertise and educational background include molecular biology, microbiology, immunology, cell culture, flow cytometry, confocal microscopy, and drug discovery. Also, he has previously worked in clinical laboratories. Moreover, for 13 years, he was aprofessor at two medical schools, teaching microbiology, immunology, virology, and parasitology courses, and served as an investigator, student mentor, and advisor. He has served as an ad hoc editor and reviewer for 11 and 59 peer-reviewed journals. Currently, Dr. Varela-Ramirez is responsible for the day-to-day operation of the Cellular Characterization and Biorepository (CCB) Core Facility of BBRC-UTEP. This position entails providing direct assistance, service, assay development, and training on flow cytometry, confocal microscopy, and bioimager instruments to all Core Facility users, including professors, technicians, research assistants, and both undergraduate and graduate students.

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