Dr. Claudio Hetz was trained as a biotechnology engineer at the University of Chile and completed a PhD in biomedical sciences at the Serono Pharmaceutical Research Institute in Switzerland. He then performed his post-doctoral training at Harvard University. He joined the University of Chile during 2007 and is currently full professor at the Faculty of Medicine and adjunct professor at Harvard. He is also currently the co-director of the Biomedical Neuroscience Institute. His research focuses on understanding the molecular basis of protein folding stress and its relationship to pathological conditions affecting the nervous system, including Parkinson´s disease, and the development of prototypic strategies to prevent neuronal damage. He has received important awards including the KIA International Award and the TWAS-ROLAC Young Scientist Prize as an outstanding young scientist in Latin America. He was also a finalist for the Eppendorf and Science Award in Neurobiology and was awarded the Cell Biology Society and Bios-Chile prize as the best young scientist in Chile.