Mariano A. Garcia-Blanco, MD, PhD, is the F. Palmer Weber Medical Research Professor and Chair of Microbiology, Immunology and Cancer Biology at the University of Virginia, and co-founder of Circurna. He launched his independent scientific career in 1990 as Assistant Professor at Duke University, where he ultimately held the Charles D. Watts Professorship of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, founded the Duke Center for RNA Biology, and was a principal in the establishment of the Emerging Infectious Diseases Research Program at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore. He subsequently served as the Vacek Distinguished Professor and Chair of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) before joining the University of Virginia in 2023.

A leader in RNA biology and virology, he has authored more than 200 publications with continuous NIH funding since 1991. He has mentored dozens of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, many of whom now lead prominent research programs in the United States and internationally. He is a member of the Association of American Physicians (2011), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2022), and the National Academy of Sciences (2025), and a Fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2011) and the American Academy of Microbiology (2013). He has co-founded multiple life sciences companies and continues to serve on scientific advisory boards across the biotechnology sector.