Dr. Jesus Villar is Group Chief of the Center for Biomedical Research in Respiratory Diseases in Madrid and Senior Scientist of the Research Unit at the Hospital Universitario Dr. Negrin in Las Palmas, Spain. He is the Coordinator of the Multidisciplinary Organ Dysfunction Evaluation Research Network (MODERN) in the Canary Islands, where he resides. Dr. Villar received his medical degree from the University of La Laguna in the Canary Islands, followed by a masters degree for work on meningococcal sepsis and a PhD in Critical Care Medicine from the University of La Laguna. He has been a research fellow and associate scientist at the University of Toronto, and Professor at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. Over three decades, Dr. Villar has been an international leader in understanding the acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and its most common causes. He has contributed seminal articles on the incidence of ARDS, the role of shock as a cause of ARDS, and demonstrated methods for improving care of these patients with strategies ranging from lung protective mechanical ventilation to the application of systemic hypothermia. His research has spanned from animal studies and basic science discoveries of genetic determinants of ARDS to clinical and epidemiological studies that propose a new classification for ARDS. Overall, Dr. Villar has authored more than 200 publications in international scientific journals and he has been funded by the National Research Agency of the Spanish Government since 1994.

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