This is the 123nd article in Bears Doing Big Things, a weekly column celebrating the stories of notable M-A alumni.
Claudia Sánchez-Beato Johnson ’16 has built a globally minded career at the intersection of medicine and technology, striving to advance public health through innovative research. Sánchez-Beato Johnson is a biomedical scientist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Institute for Genome Sciences, where she works to translate clinical and disease ontology data into systems that power global research.
Sánchez-Beato Johnson was born and raised in Madrid, attending international boarding schools throughout her childhood. “Growing up across cultures and educational systems gave me an early understanding of how healthcare access, lifestyle, and medical outcomes vary globally,” she said. “Being immersed in Mediterranean culture—where movement, nutrition, and community are integral to daily life—shaped my earliest view of health as something proactive and holistic rather than reactive.”
During high school, Sánchez-Beato Johnson moved to Maine for boarding school, then later had the opportunity to move to the Bay Area to live with family, where she began attending M-A. “M-A played a formative role in giving me the confidence to pursue interdisciplinary interests before they had a clear roadmap,” she said.
At M-A, Sánchez-Beato Johnson competed in cross country. “That was an amazing experience to get connected with the school and the community,” she said. “I became interested in performance, recovery, and nutrition, especially as someone adapting to endurance training for the first time.”
Sánchez-Beato Johnson especially enjoyed her Biology class with Nancy Day, who encouraged her curiosity and helped turn her learning into a passion for biological mechanisms she was eager to pursue further. “She taught me a lot about the foundations of biology, and on a personal level she was a great support system. She was a very nice anchor for me to have a foundation to be able to explore all the things that I loved about biology and the human body,” she said.
“I began connecting movement, energy availability, and recovery to underlying biological mechanisms, which was the moment science shifted from something I studied to something I actively questioned and explored,” Sánchez-Beato Johnson said.
Following M-A, Sánchez-Beato Johnson attended the College of William and Mary, where she studied health sciences. There, she conducted an independent grant-funded international research project in molecular and cardiovascular physiology, carrying out fieldwork in Portugal and Spain. She also got the opportunity to share her findings at international conferences.
“That’s when I fell in love with research because, especially in medicine, any small error can risk the life of someone, so everything is very methodical. I think research is like artistry, it’s more similar to writing—you’re able to design your projects, you’re able to have fun and play with science and go that way,” Sánchez-Beato Johnson said.
Sánchez-Beato Johnson graduated from college in 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. At first, she was unsure of what route she wanted to follow in her career. “Initally, I was thinking, since I love medicine so much, I found the only path to pursue is medical school. But I was like, ‘There’s people all over the world, scientists that are collaborating together to try to address this pandemic. This is fantastic.’ And I fell in love,” Sánchez-Beato Johnson said.
Sánchez-Beato Johnson decided to earn her Masters of Science in Systems Medicine at Georgetown University. “I moved to [Washington] D.C. and I absolutely fell in love, because it taught me that one size does not fit all in the treatment of medicine. You can combine so many different disciplines, you can integrate technology into medicine, which is what I’m passionate about now,” she said.
At Georgetown, Sánchez-Beato Johnson conducted research in precision medicine and biotechnology. She also studied Alzheimer’s disease diagnostics and wearable health devices, gaining experience working with large datasets and developing real-world applications.
After getting her master’s degree, Sánchez-Beato Johnson joined the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Institute for Genome Sciences as a biomedical scientist. She currently works on the Disease Ontology, a biomedical knowledgebase funded by the National Institutes of Heath. The database supports over 36,000 researchers in over 150 countries and acts as a key foundation for work in genetics, disease modelings, and precision medicine for universities and the industry.
“I’m inspired where biomedical science and emerging technologies come together to spark innovation. I enjoy combining both experimental and computational approaches to explore complex biological systems and turning biomedical data into actionable knowledge,” Sánchez-Beato Johnson said.
Sánchez-Beato Johnson researches diseases’ causes—whether that’s genetic, environmental, or another cause—and their symptoms to be able to distinguish one from another. That information is added to the Disease Ontology database, which is accessible to biotechnology companies, government agencies, and patients. Her work has been published by Oxford University Press.
She also handles requests from researchers across the world, generating data to help support their projects. “It’s super cool, because you get to meet and interact with different projects of research that are going around the world and you get to help them as well by providing disease data,” Sánchez-Beato Johnson said.
“The thing that I love is I’m able to do research, and I’m able to do it remotely, so I can go in the office to talk to colleagues, to work together, but I’m able to have a flexible schedule, which is fantastic,” Sánchez-Beato Johnson said.
As a part of her role, Sánchez-Beato Johnson has traveled around the world to deliver award-winning presentations of her research at significant scientific conferences and institutions, including the National Institutes of Health, the European Bioinformatics Institute at Cambridge, and at international biocuration and biotechnology conferences in Brazil and India.
Sánchez-Beato Johnson has also been recently leading the Spanish-language scientific translation and engagement efforts in order to make the data more accessible and promote international collaboration. “For me, bilingual science is about impact. Research only matters if knowledge can be accessed, understood, and applied across communities and borders,” she said. “It opens up a larger scope of what you can do in research and reach communities that are often not really represented. I think that’s super cool, being able to do things that haven’t been done before.”
“Experiencing medicine and lifestyle across Europe and the United States ultimately shaped my scientific direction. I saw firsthand how disparities in representation and access influence which populations benefit from biomedical innovation and which are left behind. That global perspective continues to inform how I approach research, technology, and equity in healthcare today,” Sánchez-Beato Johnson said.
Sánchez-Beato Johnson’s advice to current M-A students: “Don’t feel pressured to fit into a single box too early. Some of the most meaningful paths are interdisciplinary, and your unique combination of interests is something to lean into, not simplify.”
To those interested in science, medicine, and technology: “You don’t have to choose between disciplines right away. Many impactful careers sit at the intersection. Stay curious, seek out mentors, and be open to paths that may not look traditional at first.”
