Dr. Mata is currently Assistant Staff at the Genomic Medicine Institute (GMI) at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation (CCF) and Assistant Professor of Molecular Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University (CCLCM-CWRU). Previously to his position at the GMI he was at the VA Puget Sound/UW for 12 years. He has worked in the field of Parkinson’s disease (PD) genetics for nearly 20 years.
A significant focus of Dr. Mata’s research has been performing genetic studies in non-European populations, especially those with a minority ethnic background such as Latinos. For this Dr. Mata created and coordinates the Latin American Research consortium on the Genetics of PD (LARGE-PD), a collaboration of more than 40 institutions in 14 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, trying to identify the genetic risk factors associated to PD in these populations. His work has been internationally recognized and he leads the Underrepresented Populations Working group in the Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s Global Parkinson’s Genetics Program (ASAP-GP2), a world-wide initiative to further understand the genetic architecture of PD in all populations
At CCF Dr. Mata is co-chair of SALUD (ERG for Hispanic caregivers) and member of the LRI Diversity Council. He is also working on developing mentoring programs at CCLCM for under-represented populations.
Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, Genomic Medicine Institute at the CCF