Karina A. Vado (she/her/ella) is a Senior Lecturer in the Program in Medicine, Science, and the Humanities. She earned a PhD in English and a Graduate Certificate in Latin American Studies from the University of Florida and holds an MA in Women’s Studies from UF’s Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies. Her research and teaching interests span the fields of Latin/x American Studies, Science and Technology Studies, and Science Fiction Studies. Interdisciplinary in scope, her current book projects, "Latinx DNA: Race, Latinidad and the Gene(ome)," "Speculations of the Flesh: Epigenetic Imaginaries in Latin/x American Science-Fiction," and "Latinx Bioethics in Latinx Literature and Culture,” interrogate the intersections of Latinidad, literature (broadly conceived), and the life sciences and consider the sociocultural implications of the vexed and ever-fluctuating biologization of Latinx identity. She regularly teaches courses on science fiction, Afrofuturism and Latinxfuturisms, literature and science, feminist science and technology studies, and Latin/x American literary and cultural studies.

Aside from research and teaching, she also serves as Associate Editor of "Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy," the flagship journal of the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association (SWPACA). Before joining JHU, she was an Assistant Professor of Latinx Studies in the Department of English at Florida Atlantic University, a Diversity Pre-Doctoral Fellow in the Humanities at Penn State University (Abington), and a McKnight Doctoral Fellow at the University of Florida.