I am a new faculty at the Marine Science and Limnology Institute at UNAM and will start doing microbial ecology and evolution.

I am interested in the ocean microbiome, which is mostly unknown. I will explore questions regarding biogeography, evolution, ecology, and physiology, such as: what are the drivers of microbial species distribution in the ocean? Which are the genomic bases of adaptation that lead to speciation? What is their role in the earth’s biogeochemistry? How do they interact with other organisms within the ecosystem?

I will use computational and experimental approaches, like metagenomics, transcriptomics, and stable isotope probing experiments, to answer those questions.

As a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin as part of the Baker Lab, I studied the ocean’s microbial communities to uncover new bacteria metabolisms involved in hydrocarbon degradation.

My interest in bioinformatics and genomics took me to my first postdoc at the Genomics and transcriptomics lab at the INECOL in Xalapa, Ver, where I used the pan-genome paradigm to design a method to identify a phytopathogenic fungus that was killing trees at the Mexican-US border.

I did my Ph.D. at the Ecology Institute at the UNAM in Mexico City. During this time, I studied the landscape genomics of a rare lineage of Vibrionaceae isolated from Cuatro Cienegas, looking for the genes that could explain the adaptation to this ultra-oligotrophic environment.

I enjoy teaching and sharing knowledge, and I love the R community. I start using R when I became part of the CDSB and Rladies community and then a co-organizer of RLadies Xalapa, a safe place for minorities to learn how to code.