Ignacio Montoya is the epitome of the American Dream, a dream that he is literally creating, one step at a time. He is an Air Force officer and fighter pilot, a military analyst, biomedical engineer, the Chief Scientific Officer and Executive Director of HINRI Labs - a nonprofit with a mission of disrupting, changing, and transforming the standard of care for spinal cord injuries nationwide and, ultimately, around the world. Most recently, Ignacio become a future astronaut candidate through NASA and a PhD neuroscientist student at UCLA. 

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Ignacio is someone who’s been brought up not fearing obstacles, from his mom passing away when he was 4 to then leaving Cuba with nothing but the clothes he had on when he was 6; Montoya from a very young age has always been very mature, driven, and focused in creating a path forward when one was nonexistent. When he sustained a spinal cord injury in December 2012, getting up from the wheelchair and walking again just became another workable objective he was sure to achieve. Since then, he has spent every single minute searching, learning, discovering, and creating ways to make that happen.