Francisco Villafuerte is a researcher and Senior Professor and Head of the Department of Biological and Physiological Sciences at the Faculty of Science and Engineering of the Cayetano Heredia Peruvian University (UPCH), and a senior researcher at the Institute for Altitude Research (IIA) at the same university. He is currently also Director of the Abraham Vaisberg Wolach Research and Development Laboratories (LID). Francisco is a physiologist specializing in issues related to environmental hypoxia and geographical altitude. He graduated from UPCH under the tutelage of Dr. Carlos Monge Cassinelli, and subsequently completed his PhD in Physiology at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Physiological Society, the advisory committee of the Hypoxia International Symposia, and the editorial board of High-Altitude Medicine and Biology, the only scientific journal focused on medical and biological issues of life at altitude. His research interests include the cardiovascular and respiratory response to acute and chronic hypoxia, the pathophysiology of chronic exposure to hypoxia, the regulation of erythropoiesis, and exercise physiology.