Diego Elias Montoya-Durango is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Physiology, at the University of Louisville's School of Medicine.

Dr. Montoya-Durango completed his undegraduate studies in Biology at Universidad de Antioquia, in Medellin city, Colombia.  He won a Fulbright Scholarship to pursue his PhD in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at the University of Louisville where he also completed an MBA degree. His Postdoctoral training focused in environmental toxicology and epigenetics, as well as immuno-oncology. 

Dr. Montoya-Durango is really passionate about the epigenetics world.  His research is centered on unveiling the effects of alcohol on reactivation of the long noncoding RNA H19 and its association with alcohol-induced liver disease (ALD). The overall goal of his project is to identify candidate targets in the liver that could be used for the development of much-need pharmacological therapies for ALD. Dr. Montoya-Durango's research is guided by Dr. Leila Gobejishvili, an Associate Professor with the Department of Physiology at the University of Louisville.

Dr. Montoya-Durango's long term goal is to establish himself as an independent scientist within the Department of Physiology and to collaborate with Dr. Gobejishvili in identifying the molecular targets controlling the H19 gene as well as using it as a novel therapeutic target.