Seville, Andalusia, Spain
Evolution is to me the most fascinating thing in Life. I love fundamental research - I have been passionate about dissecting the principles of Life and Evolution since I was very young. Academic research allows me to think freely. For that, I chose to research the most paradoxical genomic region: the centromere. This is one of the most important regions in the chromosome and, strikingly, is the region that evolves more rapidly! Apart from academic work, I enjoy teaching, writing, and I have developed a facet on scientific entrepreneurship and tech transfer, with initiatives such as Nucleate. I do much wet lab, but I am particularly trained in Bioinformatics. With the power of Computational Biology, I am driven to understand the complexities of Plant Sciences and unlock novel insights in agriculture, sustainability, and ecological preservation. Plants are my plans for the future! Last and most importantly, as a first-gen uni student, I am very concerned about the unequal access to the university system between social classes. I actively fight against that problem.
• Working in the group of Genetic and Epigenetic Inheritance in Plants (Prof. Henderson) (https://www.plantsci.cam.ac.uk/research/groups/genetic-and-epigenetic-inheritance-plants). • Work as a bioinformatician: pipeline development, design of phylogenomic studies, long-read analysis, comparative genomics across species, AI-based protein annotation, etc. Linux shell, Python and R. HPC and SLURM. • Work as a wet lab biologist: Oxford Nanopore Sequencing, Immunoprecipitation followed by Mass Spectrometry (IP-MS), Pore-C, pollen sequencing. • Department Activities - Conference organiser of NoCaSS (Norwich and Cambridge Science Symposium). - 1st year Postgraduate Student Representative at the Department of Plant Sciences. • Conferences and scientific courses - 13th TULIP Summer School 2025 in France (fully funded; 15 participants among more than 1300 applicants) - 12th Repeat Explorer Workshop "Repetitive DNA Annotation in Genome Assemblies" (May 2025) - Bayesian Phylogenetics Workshop by the Society of Spanish Researchers in UK and the Systematics Society (April 2025). - British Meiosis Meeting (March 2025). • College-related activities (King’s College Cambridge): -Entrepreneurship Lab Residential Week and One-year Programme (https://www.kingselab.org/one-year-programme) -Entrepreneurship Lab Social Venture Residential (https://www.kingselab.org/all-events/2025-social-venture-residential) -Tennis team of King’s College
• I supervise (small group tutoring following active learning principles) in the course “Mathematical and Computational Biology”. • More than 20 hours of teaching, plus revisions of exercise sheets. • Project marker (more than 30 hours of marking projects of the course).
After moving to the UK, I was committed to continuing to working with Nucleate and became member of Nucleate UK (Cambridge chapter). Some of my tasks were: -Act as point of contact (buddy) for cohort problems during the accelerator programme "Activator" UK -Expert and mentor sourcing for events and support in event organisation -Liaise with National Director and HQ to find answers to cohort questions
Nucleate (https://www.nucleate.xyz/) is a student-led organisation that aims to support bioentrepreneurs. It representsthe largest global community of bio-innovators. Some of my tasks and contributions have been: - Establish partnerships with research institutions to raise funds and collaborate on our events. - Co-organization of "From Lab To Market" Workshop Series (more than 50 attendees for a three-workshop event held in May 2024). - Management of the email and LinkedIn accounts - Co-organization of the recruitment process. - Organization of "Bioinformatics in Entrepreneurship and Industry" Webinar (more than 150 registered attendees for an event held in November 2024).
• Symposium Organizer and poster presentation at the 1st Congress of the Spanish Society of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (SEBIBC) • Poster presentation - JABI (Conference of Bioinformatics in Andalusia) • Poster presentation - IV International CBGP Workshop "Frontiers in Plant Sciences" • Involvement in several extracurricular activities (i.e. I was awarded 1st prize in the "1st Literary Contest 2024" in CBGP). • Funded by the competitive Scholarship for Collaboration at University Departments, by the Technical University of Madrid. • MSc thesis - Research project at the department of Plant Biotechnology - Title: "Detection of metagenomics enzyme variants from.the global microbiome"
Erasmus+ funded internship at Friml's Group in Plant Molecular Biology. • CRISPR-Cas9 on Marchantia polymorpha. - Cloning (T4 ligation, Gateway, Gibson, ...) - Agrobacterium-mediated plant transformation • Draparnaldia protoplast isolation and regeneration. - Algae culture - Plant tissue culture
• Last-year experimental dissertation at the IBVF (Institute of Plant Biochemistry and Photosynthesis) • Funded by a highly competitive scholarship of the Spanish Ministry of Education • I worked in the group of Systems Biology and Biotech in Microalgae (https://greennetwork.us.es/systems_biology_biotechnology_microalgae/) - Microalgae culture - Optimization of ChIP-seq protocol - Western blotting - Bioinformatic analysis (cistromics and transcriptomics) - Coding. Productive in R and Unix shell, beginner in Python and bash scripting