Luis Sarmiento is an Associate Professor in Virology at the Department of Clinical Sciences, Lund University, with a strong focus on understanding how virus-host interactions contribute to the pathogenesis of type 1 diabetes. He holds a B.S. in Microbiology (1995) and a Ph.D. in Health Science with a specialization in Virology (2008) from Havana University. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Immunovirology at Uppsala and Lund Universities in Sweden (2011-2013).

From 1995 to 2011, Luis worked as a Public Health Research Scientist at the Pedro Kouri Institute of Tropical Medicine (IPK), Cuba's national reference center for medical virology and infectious diseases, and a World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Center. At IPK, he played a key role in monitoring and controlling viral infectious diseases, overseeing all laboratory aspects of outbreak investigations, including diagnostics, molecular epidemiology, population immunity, and clinical trials for vaccines and antivirals. He contributed to the WHO Global Polio Eradication Initiative by providing training and technical consultation to partners in the Global Polio Laboratory Network.

In 2014, Luis shifted his focus from public health science to basic research by joining the Lund University Diabetes Center, where he now investigates the potential impact of viral infections on the development of type 1 diabetes. His current research priorities include studying the crosstalk mechanisms between viral infections, pancreatic beta cells, and the immune system. This work aims to significantly advance our understanding of the role of viruses in the pathogenesis of severe autoimmune diabetes.