Dr. Daniel Blanco-Melo is an experimental and computational scientist passionate about viruses and their interaction with animal hosts. Daniel is a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Benjamin tenOever at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where he is using last-generation sequencing technologies, molecular biology, and bioinformatics to understand how humans mount an efficient innate immune response against pathogenic viruses, such as Influenza A virus and SARS-CoV-2. His work revealed that a unique and inappropriate inflammatory response to SARS-CoV-2 infection, characterized by low levels of IFNs and elevated secretion of chemokines and other pro-inflammatory cytokines, drives the development of COVID-19. Daniel received his bachelor’s degree in Genomics from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where he was awarded the “Gabino Barreda” medal for high academic achievement. Following a career in Virology, He completed his Ph.D. studies in the laboratory of Paul Bieniasz at the Rockefeller University in New York where he reconstructed two fully functional ancient retroviruses and characterized the evolutionary processes responsible for their extinction. Daniel seeks to build a research program focused on an integral understanding of the mechanisms controlling our innate immune system, with the objective of repurposing such knowledge in the design of novel therapeutics against current and emerging viral threats. He is an Open Philanthropy Fellow of the Life Sciences Research Foundation and a member of the National Science Registry of Mexico (SNI I). Daniel is currently applying for tenure track faculty positions.