About Wilfredo Matias

Wilfredo was born in the Dominican Republic but moved with his family to New York when he was three. His father, a trained engineer, moved the family around the New York area before accepting work as a building superintendent and settling in the Bronx.

As an undergraduate at New York University, Wilfredo majored in both biology and romance languages and graduated summa cum laude. He also helped organize the university's first medical mission to Honduras.

After graduation he spent a year on a Fulbright Fellowship at a lab at Imperial College, London, where he studied the reproductive biology of the malaria mosquito.

Beginning full-time study for an MD the next year at Harvard Medical School, Wilfredo did research on development of an enhanced cholera vaccine at Brigham and Women's Hospital. The following summer he traveled to Haiti with Partners in Health to promote a cholera vaccine program during the worst cholera epidemic in recent history. After completing his third year of medical school, Wilfredo hopes to enroll in a new Harvard master's program in global health delivery. He envisions a career in global health with a focus on infectious disease.