Rate My Professor Salvador Almagro-Moreno

Salvador Almagro-Moreno serves as Associate Professor of Medicine in the Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Central Florida, where he joined in 2017 after completing his postdoctoral training as the Ernest Everett Just Postdoctoral Fellow at Dartmouth College's Geisel School of Medicine. He earned a BS in Biology from Universidad de Granada in Spain, an MS in Biotechnology and a PhD in Microbiology from the National University of Ireland at University College Cork. At UCF, he is a member of the National Center for Integrated Coastal Research and the Genomics and Bioinformatics cluster, focusing his research on the emergence and evolution of bacterial pathogens. His laboratory employs a holistic approach integrating ecology, computational biology, and molecular genetics to map genetic and environmental factors driving pathogenicity in model systems such as Vibrio vulnificus, the causative agent of flesh-eating infections, and Vibrio cholerae, responsible for cholera. Fieldwork spans sites in India, Brevard County, and the Indian River Lagoon in Florida, where his team discovered the novel species Vibrio floridensis, the closest non-pathogenic relative to V. vulnificus. Almagro-Moreno provides expert consultation to the Food and Drug Administration on flesh-eating bacteria and contributes to predicting outbreak risks amid climate change and public health threats like pandemics.

Almagro-Moreno's scholarly impact includes over 30 publications in leading journals, such as 'Ecological diversification reveals routes of pathogen emergence in Vibrio vulnificus' in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2021), 'Intestinal Colonization Dynamics of Vibrio cholerae' in PLoS Pathogens (2015), 'Insights into the evolution of sialic acid catabolism among bacteria' in BMC Evolutionary Biology (2009), and a perspective on pathogen emergence in Trends in Microbiology (2022). He co-authored the book Vibrio spp. Infections with Stefan Pukatzki in 2023, linking climate change to rising infections, and penned a cover feature for American Scientist on bacterial evolution. His laboratory has secured over $1.2 million in funding from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and Binational Science Foundation. Notable honors encompass the NSF CAREER Award (2021), the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Investigators in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease award—the first for UCF at $500,000 over five years (2022), Scialog Fellow designation, the prestigious Ramon y Cajal award from the Government of Spain, UCF Reach for the Stars honoree (2022), and a Research Incentive Award.