You are welcome to watch the video of our Annual 2021 Meeting below:

The 5th ‘Friends of SOBLA Lecture’ honoring the career and scientific contributions of Dr. Julio Vergara A brief account of Dr. Vergara scientific life was be given by Dr. Pancho Bezanilla (The University of Chicago), followed by a lecture by Dr. Ariel Escobar (University of California, Merced). The meeting took place on Friday February 19th, 2021 (before the 65th Annual and virtual, Meeting of the Biophysical Society). The lecture was followed by a "Career Transition, Q&A" by Dr. Claudia Moreno (University of Washington). 

Here it is an excerpt from Dr. Escobar about Dr. Vergara's scientific trajectory: 
  "Julio Vergara was born in Santiago, Chile. He is the son of a family of intellectuals and statesmen. Julio was one of the first scientists in the world to record Ca2+ currents. The experiments were performed in the giant Chilean barnacle, the “Picoroco”. This work was the central part of his Ph.D. thesis that was presented at the Catholic University of Chile. After graduating, Julio completed 2 postdocs. The First one was with Toshio Narahashi at Duke University and the second with Stanley Rappaport at the NIH. After completing his postdoctoral training, Julio returned to Chile where he became an Associate Professor in the School of Sciences and the School of Medicine at the University of Chile. In 1976, Julio decided to emigrate to the USA. After being a Visiting scholar at U Penn, he got an Assistant Professor position in the Department of Physiology at UCLA. He spent his whole career at UCLA and reached the Distinguished Professor position of Physiology in the David Geffen School of Medicine.
   Since the beginning of his career, Julio has been intrigued by the relationship between electrical excitation and mechanical contraction in skeletal muscle. Moreover, Julio has been a leader in the study of skeletal excitation-contraction coupling for more than 40 years. He had made numerous influential contributions to this scientific field. For example, he was the first to identify the delay between the action potential and Ca2+ release from the sarcoplasmic reticulum. He was the first scientist to perform Ca2+ imaging in skeletal muscle. He was the first physiologist to perform flash photolysis and use it as a tool to study the Ca2+ dynamics in skeletal muscle. He was the first to evaluate the propagation of the action potential in the t-tubules using potentiometric dyes. He functionally identified for the first time where Ca2+ release sites were located in a single sarcomere in skeletal muscle. During his whole career, Julio has been a quantitative physiologist. His creativity was evident by his ability to combine a mathematical approach with an experimental method to study excitation contraction-coupling.
    But the most important feature of Julio as a scientist is not all his scientific accomplishments. The most important thing about Julio is his passion for science. Science is not for tepid people, and Julio has never been one."
 
For a more personal perspective, please read Dr. Ariel Escobar post here: https://www.sobla.net/blog