Ariel Herrera-Vásquez is an Assistant Professor and principal investigator at the Centro de Biotecnología Vegetal, Faculty of Life Sciences, Universidad Andrés Bello, in Santiago, Chile. A biochemist by training, he holds a PhD in Molecular Genetics and Microbiology and serves as Academic Secretary of the university’s PhD programme in Molecular Biosciences.
His research examines how plants mount defence responses to biotic and abiotic stress, centring on the hormone salicylic acid and the transcriptional control of redox homeostasis in Arabidopsis thaliana. He has also worked on epigenetics and development, and has more recently opened a line investigating how plants respond to micro- and nanoplastic contamination. He is Vice President of the Chilean Society of Plant Biologists.