John Natale Galgiani was born in San Francisco, California, residing there until receiving a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Biology from Stanford University in 1968. He then attended Medical School at Northwestern Medical School, graduating in 1972. After Internship at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle, Washington, Dr. Galgiani’s second year of residency was completed at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose, California. He was a Fellow in Infectious Diseases at Stanford University for two and a half years and completed his training with an appointment as Chief Resident in Internal Medicine at Pacific Medical Center, San Francisco, California. In 1978, Dr. Galgiani moved to Tucson, joining the faculty of the University of Arizona College of Medicine where he is currently a tenured Professor.

Dr. Galgiani has focused his career on Arizona’s special problems with coccidioidomycosis (Valley fever). His work has included estimating the impact of Valley fever on the general population and on special groups such as organ transplant
recipients and patients with AIDS. For 19 years, as part of the NIH-sponsored Mycoses Study Group, Dr. Galgiani was the project director of a coccidioidomycosis clinical trials group. Through collaboration, this group has evaluated new therapies for Valley fever more rapidly and with greater clarity than might otherwise have been possible by investigators working in isolation. For the past three decades, Dr. Galgiani has been involved with efforts to prevent Valley fever through vaccination. He was a Principal Investigator in the Valley Fever Vaccine Project, a consortium involving five universities to produce a vaccine candidate based upon recombinant antigens. More recently, he is leading a UA group to develop a UAriona-invented live, avirulent vaccine for dogs and humans. Since 2005, Dr. Galgiani has developed a working group at the University of Arizona to develop a new antifungal drug, nikkomycin Z, as a cure for Valley fever. As a result of these efforts, clinical trials with nikkomycin Z were resumed in 2007.

In 1996, the Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) accepted Dr. Galgiani’s proposal to establish the Valley Fever Center for Excellence. Based at the University of Arizona, the Center’s mission is to disseminate information about Valley fever, help patients with the severest complications of this disease, and to encourage research into the biology and diseases of its etiologic agent. Since UArizona is the only research university with two medical schools situated directly within the endemic region for Valley fever, it is quite appropriate that this university provide leadership to solve this problem. As Director of the Center, Dr. Galgiani is working for its full implementation as a means of ensuring an institutional commitment to accomplish this goal. In 2021, this effort was expanded within ABOR’s New Economy Initiative to coordinate the collaboration of all three Arizona public universities.