Andrea Giuffrida, Ph.D. is the vice president for strategic industry ventures and professor of pharmacology at UT Health Science Center San Antonio (UTHSA). He received his Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Catania, Italy, and a master’s in business administration from the University of Texas San Antonio.

In 2011, he served as an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow in the Office of Science Policy at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) working on the regulatory science of biomedical products, drug development and the NIH biannual report to the American Congress.

Between 2014 and 2021, he served as vice president for research at UTHSCSA overseeing numerous initiatives to grow the university’s research infrastructure, create new academia-industry partnerships and promote entrepreneurship and biotechnology commercialization in academic settings. As a scientist, Dr. Giuffrida has provided important breakthroughs to the neuropharmacology of the cannabinoid system and its role in neurodegenerative and psychomotor disorders and authored over 85 scientific publications. Since 2014, he is a member of the “Group on Graduate Research, Education, and Training” of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), vice chair of the Texas Healthcare & Bioscience Institute, and serves on the board of directors of BioMedSA and of the Texas Research and Technology Foundation.