Professor
Houston Methodist and Weill Cornell Medical College
Disclosure(s): No financial relationships to disclose
Cesar A. Arias, MD. MSc, PhD serves as the Chief, Division of Infectious Diseases at Houston Methodist Hospital and Chief Teams Science Officer and Co-Director of the Center for Infectious Diseases at Houston Methodist Research Institute. Dr Arias is the current holder of the John F. III and Ann H. Bookout Distinguished Chair for Research Excellence at Houston Methodist Hospital. He holds appointments as Professor of Medicine, Pathology and Genomic Medicine at Houston Methodist Academic Institute and Weill Cornell Medical College. He also holds a joint appointment as Adjunct Professor at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX.
Dr. Arias earned his MD from Universidad El Bosque, Bogota, Colombia (first in class), MSc in Clinical Microbiology at the University of London, UK (St. Bartholomew’s and The Royal London Hospital School of Medicine and Dentistry), London, UK and his PhD in Molecular Microbiology from the University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. He trained in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases at University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX. He is certified in both Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases by the American Board of Internal Medicine.
He is a nationally and internationally recognized physician-scientist with > 25 years of experience in conducting NIH-funded basic, translational and clinical research on mechanisms of antibiotic resistance and the molecular and genomic epidemiology and clinical impact of antibiotic resistant organisms, in particular with the use of state-of-the-art genomic analyses (>350 publications) and he has been continuously funded by the NIH from >15 years. Dr. Arias was one of the first recipients of the NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award and his innovative work has been recognized by the American Society of Microbiology (Young Investigator Award), the Infectious Diseases Society of America (Oswald Avery Award for Early Achievement), Pan-American Society for Infectious Diseases (Isidro Zavala Medal for Early Career Outstanding Research in Infectious Diseases) and British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (Young Investigator Award), among others.
Dr Arias has been actively engaged with the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), serving on the Program Planning Committee of IDWeek as Vice-Chair (2018) and Chair (2019), Member of the Board of Directors of IDSA and Publications Committee. He recently chaired the NIH Anti-infectives and Targets Study Section (AIRT; 2023-2025) and served as standing member of the NIH/NIAID Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, DP2 and European Union Joint Program Initiative for Antimicrobial Resistance (JPIAMR) New Investigator Award study sections. Dr. Arias serves as Editor-In-Chief of Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, a premier journal for antibiotic resistance research and is member of several editorial boards of prominent journals in the field. He is part of World Health Organization Antibiotic Pipeline Panel, and also served as consultant of the WHO for emerging pathogens. Dr Arias is also part of the NIH-funded Antimicrobial Resistance Leadership Group. Locally, he served as the Chair of the Gulf Coast Consortium on Antimicrobial Resistance in Houston, TX (a partnership between 8 institutions in the Texas Medical Center) and the founder program director of the first intersinstitutional postdoctoral T32 training program in antimicorbial resistance. Funded by the Wellcome Trust, Dr Arias also founded the Molecular Genetics and Antimicrobial Resistance Unit and International Center for Microbial Genomics at Universidad El Bosque, Bogota, Colombia, developing a major program antibiotic resistance research in Latin America for the last 23 years. He is also the founder Co-Chair of the new ASM and IDSA antimicorbial resistance meeting, IMARI (Interdisciplinary Meeting on Antibiotic Resistance and Innovation)
Dr. Arias was elected Fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and inducted to the American Society for Clinical Investigation in 2015. He was elected fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology in 2019.