About

I have been passionate about science and learning all my life. During my early years at college, I finished two BSc degrees, one in Biology at the University of Antioquia and a second one in Biological Engineering at the National University of Colombia. This experience gave me the opportunity to learn basic research in biology and the application of math models and engineering systems in industry. I conducted research modeling drug targets for leishmaniasis and creating molecular characterizations of clinical isolates of Fusarium. It was during this time that I developed my passion for data science.

After this, I completed my MSc in Biomedical Research at University of Valladolid in Spain thanks to a Santander scholarship. There I worked in a research project evaluating the splicing effects of BRCA2 variants in hereditarian breast and ovarian cancer. This experience gave me the opportunity to expand my knowledge in human genomics and molecular techniques in biomedical sciences. My success in my master’s degree opened opportunities to continue with my Ph.D. with the Fulbright and Schlumberger fellowships.

I then moved to the U.S. to earn my Ph.D. in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, where I joined Wise lab and graduated with a perfect 4.0 GPA and was awarded multiple recognitions for excellence in research. My Ph.D. research proposed mathematical models to analyze proteomics and transcriptomics datasets applied to unraveling plant disease resistance mechanisms. I integrated systems biology and statistical modeling approaches with multi-omics data to characterize the defense of barley to the powdery mildew disease. I developed a novel method for computationally prioritizing protein-protein interactions from next generation yeast-two hybrid data, called Y2H-SCORES, and created a workflow to automate the analysis in R. These projects contribute to the understanding of mechanisms that control plant immunity and will benefit sustainable agriculture and cereal breeding programs.

I am looking forward to collaborations and opportunities where I can find fulfillment in my work by continuing to expand my understanding of biological systems and apply my data analysis expertise