Dr. Juan Silva Urra
Associate researcher

Born in Chimbarongo, studies at the University of Chile and P. Universidad Católica, PhD at the University of Barcelona. Throughout my life I have worked sequentially in my three professions, especially in the Hospital Worker Hospital (Santiago and Antofagasta), Chiledeportes-IND (Antofagasta), Paranal Observatory. Following my vocation in the last 15 years I have joined the University of Antofagasta as a associate professor where I do undergraduate classes in Medicine and Physical Education and postgraduate in Master in Biomedical Sciences and in Master in Physical Activity, Sports and Health, This last professional program of which I am director since its decree in 2016. I have the total conviction that exercise is the best “drug” not commercialized or managed in a good way, and that pre and postgraduate students should learn more about this, but outside the classroom. My line of research has gone through the path of physiology and high altitude medicine, simply and as a former mountaineer said when asked: why do you climb the mountains?, his answer was “because they are there”. For the north of Chile the high altitude has ancestral, historical, religious and economic connotations for centuries; and my perception when I arrived in the north (1997) was similar to that of the mountaineer, “the high altitude is there “ with its questions about the response of living beings, including humans, who are exposed in an acute or chronic intermittent way; as well as those with permanent residence who have managed to live harmoniously in it; In the latter, there are perhaps the most important responses of adaptation to hypoxia. Finally this is not so new, since Aristotle raised questions about the thinness of the air on Mount Olympus several centuries A.C.

Research lines                   

• Medicine and physiology at high altitude

• Exercise and high altitude

• Physical activity, sport and health

Contact
juan.silva.urra@uantof.cl