Dr. de Rivero Vaccari graduated Summa Cum Laude with a B.S. in Biology from Florida International University, where he was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society. He then pursued his Ph.D. in Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Miami in the laboratory of Dr. Robert W. Keane and his post-doctoral fellowship in Neurotrauma at The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis in the laboratory of Dr. W. Dalton Dietrich. He also holds a M.S. in Business Analytics from the Herbert Business School of the University of Miami. He has trained in Biomarker Science at The Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center and in Computational Immunology at The Santa Fe Institute.

His research focuses on understanding early inflammatory events corresponding to the innate immune response, the first line of defense against tissue damage and infections. He has studied the innate immune response for over 20 years and was the first to show the involvement of the inflammasome complex in the central nervous system after spinal cord and traumatic brain injury.