About me...
I am theoretical biologist with a background in statistical physics and complex systems. My research focuses on quantifying the interactions that occur within biological systems; how they are shaped by the effect of the environment and how they impact community and ecosystem-level processes, as well as the emergence of patterns at larger scales. In particular, I am interested in understanding the emergence of self-organized spatiotemporal patterns across different complex biological systems and scales, from microbes to entire landscapes. Using a combination of mathematical and computational tools, I develop simple, yet biologically-grounded models that I then compare to empirical data.
After completing my degree in Physics in the University of La Laguna (Spain), I moved to the University of the Balearic Islands (Spain) where I completed a Master Degree in Physics, with a Master Thesis studying the effect of temporal disorder on models of interacting particles. Then, I got my PhD at Institute for Cross Disciplinary Physics and Complex Systems (IFISC). My thesis covered a series of ecological problems from the point of view of nonequilibrium statistical physics: vegetation pattern formation, animal mobility and temporal fluctuations. After that, I started a postdoc in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University, in which I investigated the interplay between the ecology, evolution and self-organized multicellularity of microbial communities. This work was conducted in close collaboration with xperimental groups, using the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum and the biofilm-forming bacterium Vibirio cholerae as model organisms, and supported by a Life Sciences Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship sponsored by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Currently, I am a SIMONS-FAPESP Research Assistant Professor in Biological Physics at ICTP-SAIFR (São Paulo, Brazil). You can visit my profile in Google Scholar. |
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