Celia Aranda MD, PhD

Dr. Celia Mercedes Alpuche Aranda is a pediatrician specializing in Pediatric Infectology. She holds a Master's and Doctorate in Medical Sciences from the UNAM School of Medicine and a postdoctoral degree in the Infectious Diseases Unit of the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Harvard University School of Medicine.

Aranda worked at the Federico Gómez Children's Hospital of Mexico (HIMFG) as an infectious disease specialist and head of the Intestinal Bacteriology Laboratory. She was the coordinator of the Infectology and Clinical Microbiology Laboratory of the Department of Experimental Medicine of the UNAM School of Medicine. She held the position of director of the Institute of Epidemiological Diagnosis and Reference (InDRE) of the Ministry of Health (2007-2012), where she was involved in the country's epidemiological surveillance and worked on the 2009 influenza pandemic. She is currently the director of the Center for Research on Infectious Diseases (CISEI) of the National Institute of Public Health (INSP).

Aranda participates in technical-consultant and advisory groups in the areas of antimicrobial resistance, vaccine-preventable and emerging diseases, alleged use of biological weapons, and laboratory networks, at national and international levels (PAHO/WHO, United Nations, etc.).

Aranda has been a thesis director for undergraduate, master's, and doctoral students. Her research work is on bacterial pathogenesis, epidemiology and molecular bases of bacterial resistance, new diagnostic techniques, and transmission dynamics of vaccine-preventable and emerging diseases such as influenza, Dengue, Chikungunya, and Zika. She has been part of the COVID-19 working group in support of the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) since 2020, is coordinator of the Technical Advisory Group on Immunizations of the National Universal Vaccination Program, and was part of the COVID-19 Vaccination Technical Advisory Group in Mexico (06/2020-03/2023).