Meet BioBuilder Carlos Vera

in order to establish our PCR testing lab, we use our faculty and say, we want to do this. We only have one PCR real time machine. We are going to use it as much as possible. And we start working from zero and in one week we have the (testing) lab.”

Carlos Vera

Dr. Carlos Vera is a Professor at the Baja California University (UABC), at the Tijuana Technology Institute (ITT), and in the C.O.S.M.O.S program at UC-San Diego.

In a conversation recorded on February 9th, 2021, Carlos Vera described the work he is doing in Tijuana to mitigate the COVID crisis there, including building an app to optimally deploy the very few ambulances that must meet the needs of 2 million residents, and using his lab’s PCR machine to provide free COVID testing.

We also talk about how his multidisciplinary background in electrical engineering and medicine have helped him rapidly address the health crisis in Mexico, and how he loves both math and teaching BioBuilder’s synthetic biology curriculum to local teachers.

Read the Transcript of our Conversation