UCSF’s innovative, collaborative approach to patient care, research and education spans disciplines across the life sciences, making it a world leader in scientific discovery and its translation to improving health.
Pragmatic and goal oriented pharmaceutical scientist (PharmD, PhD) with a strong clinical and preclinical background. Having worked in different environments helped me developing a unique set of soft skills including being a team player, a critical thinker and a problem solver. I work organized and I am always eager to learn and expand my knowledge. My research interests include infectious diseases, mechanistic pharmacokinetics, pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic modeling and simulation, and model-informed drug development.
Dr. Velásquez is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases, and Global Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He is an infectious disease physician and clinical researcher focused on tuberculosis (TB) therapeutics. Based at the UCSF Center for Tuberculosis (tb.ucsf.edu), he works with the endTB consortium (endTB.org), the SMART4TB consortium (tbcenter.jhu.edu/smart4tb), and the AIDS Clinical Trials Group on Phase 2 and Phase 3 randomized controlled trials evaluating new shortened regimens for drug-susceptible and drug-resistant TB.
I hold a Ph.D. from the Max-Planck Institute in Berlin. Before joining the UCSF Faculty, I was a Member of the Basel Institute for Immunology, Basel, Switzerland, and a Principal Investigator at the Max-Planck Institute in Tübingen, Germany.
My lab employs genomic technologies, including metagenomic next-generation sequencing, immune repertoire sequencing, bulk and single cell transcriptomics and phage display assays for viral and autoantibody detection to better understand the pathophysiology of a variety of neuroinflammatory syndromes ranging from multiple sclerosis to infectious and autoimmune meningitis and encephalitis.
My research is focused on identifying accurate and affordable TB diagnostic tools to improve the efficiency of TB diagnosis and delivery of TB preventive therapy for high-risk populations in resource-limited settings. I have experience in leading international studies of diagnostic accuracy and longitudinal cohort studies.
Dr. Zha is a Pulmonary and Critical Care physician scientist. She specializes in the care of patients with bronchiectasis and nontuberculous mycobacterial pulmonary infections. She cofounded the Bronchiectasis and Pulmonary NTM Clinic at UCSF and attends in the Parnassus intensive care units. In addition, Dr. Zha conducts basic science research that focuses on understanding the innate immune response to mycobacterial infections.