I have more than 25 years of productive research in the virology field in four different countries, both in the academia and in industry, working on virus evolution and pathogenesis with particular success in translational research. Our research group focuses on the development of innovative methodologies, with emphasis on novel antiviral strategies and vaccine development. We continue to study transmission and pathogenesis of HIV drug resistant variants in Africa and the Pacific Islands; however, our interest on emergent viruses led us to start a program dedicated to virus discovery and viral pandemic preparedness. We are using a multidisciplinary approach to preempt virus evolution, using coronaviruses as our first model, to generate broad antigen diversity to develop universal vaccines that could protect against known and/or novel viruses. We use our innovative system to fully characterize these new viral variants, studying their transmissibility and antigenicity, structure, and pathogenicity, including the ability for reverse zoonosis events.