Juan Pesantez Valdivieso
Graduate Student
Bio
Juan Pesantez-Valdivieso DVM, MSc joined the Gonzalez Lab as a PhD student in August 2024. He is originally from Quito-Ecuador, where he obtained a degree in Veterinary Medicine from Universidad Central del Ecuador in 2013, followed by a brief period in small animal practice. In 2015, he completed a master’s degree in Animal Bioscience at the Roslin Institute of the University of Edinburgh, where he participated in the project ‘Exploring new sources of mesenchymal stem cells in horses’. He then returned to Ecuador where he took up a full-time teaching position at Universidad de las Americas (UDLA). At UDLA, he guided and mentored his students not only in classes but also in their thesis work. In the Gonzalez Lab, Juan will be exploring the capacity of normothermic machine perfusion to improve intestinal allograft health before transplantation. Juan is a coffee enthusiast and hopes to be a non-professional barista.