Rate My Professor Jorge Frias-Lopez

Jorge Frias-Lopez, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Oral Biology at the University of Florida College of Dentistry, where he has served since August 2016. He earned a B.Sc. in Biology in 1987 and a Ph.D. in Microbiology in 1992, both from the University of Barcelona in Spain, followed by an Agricultural Engineer degree in 1998 from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. His postdoctoral work included positions at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, focusing on antibiotic resistance in the gut microbiome and polymicrobial diseases in corals, and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he developed metatranscriptomic tools for analyzing gene expression in microbial communities.

Prior to joining the University of Florida, Frias-Lopez was an Associate Member of the Staff and Vice-chair of the Department of Microbiology at the Forsyth Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and served as a lecturer on Oral Medicine, Infection, and Immunity at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine. His research centers on the ecology of the human oral microbiome, employing metatranscriptomic and systems biology approaches to study periodontal disease progression, microbial community structure, keystone species, and potential links to oral squamous cell carcinoma. He has received honors including the John W. Hein Research Fellowship from the Forsyth Institute and various fellowships from Spanish institutions. Frias-Lopez teaches courses such as DEN5127 – Infectious Diseases and contributes to graduate programs in biomedical sciences.