Mariano Garcia-Blanco is the F. Palmer Weber Medical Research Professor and chair of the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Cancer Biology at the University of Virginia. An expert in RNA biology and RNA virology, he has been funded by the National Institutes of Health since 1991 and has published more than 200 articles while mentoring over 60 doctoral and postdoctoral trainees. He has held faculty positions at Duke University, Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, and the University of Texas. He is the founder of Intronn, Singapore Advanced Biologics, Autoimmunity BioSolutions, and Emervax.

Garcia-Blanco is a member of the Association of American Physicians, the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Microbiology, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2025.