The Ragon Institute is pleased to announce Carlos Casquero as the latest recipient of the Ramón Areces Foundation Research Fellowship at the Ragon Institute. The fellowship supports researchers with ties to Spain in pursuing immunology research at the Ragon in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Ramón Areces Foundation Research Fellowship is supported by a partnership between the Ragon Institute and the Ramón Areces Foundation, a Madrid-based organization that funds scientific and technical research in Spain and by researchers with ties to Spain working abroad. The fellowship provides two years of salary and benefits for postdoctoral researchers studying HIV/AIDS, other infectious diseases of global importance, vaccine development, cancer, or other areas of immunology investigated at the Ragon Institute. Fellows work under the guidance of a Ragon faculty member and gain access to the Institute’s interdisciplinary research environment and state-of-the-art facilities.

Casquero, who trained in biochemistry at the University of Navarra in Spain, is a research technician in the Walker Lab at the Ragon Institute. His research focuses on HIV, including the cellular and immune dynamics that shape how the virus persists in people on antiretroviral therapy. He is a contributing author on recent work from the Walker Lab and collaborators examining how CD8+ T cell responses relate to the size and activity of the HIV reservoir during chronic treated infection, a line of inquiry central to ongoing efforts to understand the barriers to HIV cure.

At the Ragon, Casquero joins a research community that has long made the study of HIV and the immune system a core part of its mission. The Walker Lab, led by Ragon Institute founding director Bruce Walker, MD, studies how the immune system controls HIV and what distinguishes the rare individuals who suppress the virus without treatment, with the goal of translating those insights into vaccines and therapies.Casquero joins current Ramón Areces Foundation Research Fellows Gema González Rubio, PhD, of the Evavold Lab, and Alberto Lopez-Munoz, PhD, of the Balazs Lab at the Ragon Institute. Together, they are part of a growing portfolio of international fellowship programs at the Ragon Institute, reflecting the Institute’s commitment to training the next generation of scientists from around the world.