MSc, Systems Biology

Maastricht University (UM)

Maastricht, the Netherlands

2024 - 2022

• Scholarship: UM Holland-High Potential Scholarship for students from outside the EU/EEA.
• GPA: 8.78/10 (Cum Laude) - best score of the Systems Biology 2024 class.
• Thesis: MicW2Graph: Building a knowledge graph of the wastewater treatment microbiome and its biological context - MaCSBio thesis award.

B.Eng., Biotechnology

Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ)

Quito, Ecuador

2020 - 2016

• Minor: Software engineering.
• GPA: 3.78/4 (Magna Cum Laude) - second best score of the College of Biological and Environmental Sciences 2020 class.

Research Intern

Multi-omics Network Analytics Group - Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability, Technical University of Denmark

Copenhagen, Denmark

May. 2024 - Nov. 2023

• Investigated the microbiome of wastewater treatment to build MicW2Graph, an open-source knowledge graph that integrates metagenomic and metatranscriptomic information with their biological context, including biological processes, environmental features, chemical compounds, and additional metadata (See details here).
• Advisors: Alberto Santos Delgado, Martina Kutmon

Data Science Consultant

Universidad de Las Américas

Quito, Ecuador

Oct. 2022 - Apr. 2022

• Created a curated database of 50,000 herbarium records from tropical forest species of the Americas using web scraping and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility API.
• Developed machine learning classifiers to predict the phenological stages of the forest species using the herbarium records. These models can be used to design conservation strategies of the tropical forest species (See details here).

Research Assistant

Applied Signal Processing and Machine Learning Research Group - USFQ

Quito, Ecuador

2021

• Created a method based on network science and similarity searching to explore the chemical space of antiparasitic peptides and discover new drugs (See details here).
• Advisors: Yovani Marrero-Ponce, Noel Pérez Pérez

Research Intern

Computational and Theoretical Chemistry Group - USFQ

Quito, Ecuador

2020 - 2017

• Identified binding specificity between repressor proteins and a transcriptional factor associated with the jasmonic acid pathway in Arabidopsis thaliana through molecular dynamics simulations and machine learning algorithms (See details here).
• Advisor: Miguel Angel Méndez Silva

Research Intern

Bio-Chemoinformatics Group - Universidad de Las Américas

Quito, Ecuador

2020 - 2018

• Understood the impact of horizontal gene transfer in the genome of Streptomyces clavuligerus using phylogenetics, and other bioinformatics tools (See details here).
• Proposed molecular mimicry between Zika envelope protein and human neuronal proteins through molecular dynamics and protein-protein interaction networks.
• Advisors: Vinicio Armijos, Yunierkis Perez

Research Intern

Tumor Metabolism and Therapeutic Oncology Laboratory - Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology

Gwangju, South Korea

2019

• Performed density functional theory and molecular dynamics simulations to understand the impact of a mutation in the ZN domain of the CRBN protein (See details here).
• Advisors: Miguel Angel Méndez Silva, Steve K. Cho

Co-organizer and co-instructor of a Bioinformatics boot camp

RSG Ecuador and iGEM Ecuador

Virtual event

2021

• I designed and taught the course material.
• This course covered the basics of Linux, terminal usage, text and file processing command line tools, Bash/AWK scripting with applications in Bioinformatics, and Git/GitHub.

Undergraduate Teaching Assistant

Learning Center - USFQ

Virtual events

2020

• Provided online mentorship of Biotechnology, Mathematics, and Engineering subjects to undergraduate students.

Undergraduate Teaching Assistant

General Biology Laboratory - USFQ

Quito, Ecuador

2018 - 2016

• Graded reports, tests, and other homework from the course.
• Provided feedback and guidance to undergraduate students in topics of the course.

MaCSBio Thesis Award

Maastricht University

Maatricht, the Netherlands

2024

• MaCSBio selects one of the graduating MSc System Biology students based on thesis defense quality, quality of the written thesis, scientific merit of the written thesis, and academic records.

Visit Grant

Danish Data Science Academy

Copenhagen, Denmark

2024

• This grant covered the travel and accomodation expenses for my MSc thesis internship.

Cum Laude Graduation Distinction

Maastricht University

Maatricht, the Netherlands

2024 - 2022

• This award recognizes students who have a GPA of 8/10 or higher.

UM Holland-High Potential Scholarship

Maastricht University

Maatricht, the Netherlands

2022

• The UM Holland-High Potential Scholarship programme offers 24 full scholarships of € 30,000 (including tuition fee waiver and monthly stipend) each academic year for highly talented students from outside the European Union (EU) who have been admitted to a master’s programme at UM.

Best oral presentation award

6th Brazilian Student Council Symposium: Omics and Data Science

Virtual event

2021

“For more data on labor informality” Innovation Challenge Award

Datalat, PNUD Ecuador, UN Women Ecuador, and the International Labour Organization

Virtual event

2021

• This competition searched for a technological solution to collect labor informality data in Ecuador. There were 39 proposals from 80 interdisciplinary teams (See details about the challenge here).

Chancellor’s Honor List and Magna Cum Laude Graduation Distinction

Universidad San Francisco de Quito

Quito, Ecuador

2020 - 2016

• These awards recognize students who have a GPA of 3.7/4 or higher.

Third HPC Summer School Colombia: Bio and Data Science scholarship

CyberColombia

Virtual event

2020

• The scholarship covered registration expenses for the event.

2nd RSG-Colombia Symposium travel award

RSG Colombia

Ibagué, Colombia

2019

• This award covered the travel expenses to attend the event.

Global Intern Program Scholarship

Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology

Gwangju, South Korea

2019

• The GIP awarded students with accommodation and a monthly stipend to cover living expenses for eight weeks. During this time, we were involved in a research project and received valuable training and mentoring.

Streamlit creators program

Streamlit

Virtual

Current - 2022

• I have created several web applications with the Streamlit Python package and became part of the community of creators.

Open Life Science (OLS) program

Open Life Science

Virtual

Current - 2021

• Leader of the HerrCompBioinfo project during the 4th cohort of the OLS program. We created an open-source educational resource of computational tools for Bioinformatics enthusiasts written in Spanish. Also, I learned how to create and manage open science and open source projects.
• I mentored a group in the 5th cohort of the OLS program to create a computer vision-based tool to improve cancer diagnosis in Cameroon. See details about this project here.
• I gave a talk about contributing guidelines and codes of conduct for open projects in the 6th cohort of OLS program.

Regional Student Group (RSG) Ecuador

International Society for Computational Biology Student Council

Virtual

2023 - 2020

• Co-founder and current president of the RSG Ecuador. This group aims to create a long-lasting community of students and researchers residing in Ecuador that work on Bioinformatics.
• Co-chair of the 1st Ecuadorian-Venezuelan Symposium of Young Bioinformatics Researchers.
• Fellowship committee chair of the 17th Student Council Symposium.
• Contributed to the program and fellowships committees of the 4th ISCB Latin American Student Council Symposium.

Saturdays.AI Quito 2021

Saturdays.AI Quito

Virtual event

2021

• Led my group project, which was an early plant disease detector based on convolutional neural networks, trained to recognize two types of maize infectious diseases.(See details here).