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Contact

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Skills

Technical

Programming Languages:
Python R bash c++ java

DevOps:
github git Docker

Data Science:
jupyter Python R

Databases and Cloud:
mysql postgresql firebase heroku


Languages

Disclaimer

The source code is available at sayalaruano/cv.

Last updated on 2023-11-17.

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Sebastián Ayala-Ruano

I am a young researcher and freelance data scientist. I have worked in Bioinformatics and Cheminformatics for five years at various laboratories. My current research interests are devoted to Network Science and Machine Learning for drug discovery. I am part of several research, open-science, and software development communities (ISCBSC, The Carpentries, Streamlit Creators, and Open Life Science). Moreover, I am involved in some initiatives to empower Bioinformatics in Ecuador and Latin America.

Education

MSc, Systems Biology

Maastricht University (UM)

Maatricht, the Netherlands

2024 - 2022

  • Scholarship: UM Holland-High Potential Scholarship for students from outside the EU/EEA.

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.

Work Experience

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. The models had values greater than 90% on all the performance metrics, and they can be used to design conservation strategies of the tropical forest species.

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).
  • I continued working on this research project in my undergraduate thesis.
  • Advisors: Miguel Angel Méndez Silva, Steve K. Cho

Teaching Experience

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

RSG Ecuador and iGEM Ecuador

Virtual event

2021

  • I designed and taught most of 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 Systems Engineering subjects to undergraduate students that needed help.

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.

Publications

Peer reviewed journal articles

Editorial journal articles

Others

Ayala-Ruano, S.*, & Zurita, J. (2021). HerrCompBioinfo: un recurso educativo de código abierto de herramientas computacionales para entusiastas de la Bioinformática. doi: doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5748335

*co-first author

Selected presentations

  1. Contributing Guidelines and Codes of Conduct for Open Projects. (2022). Expert talk. 6th cohort of Open Life Science (See details here).
  2. Exploring the chemical space of antiparasitic peptides and discovery of new promising leads through a novel approach based on network science and similarity searching. (2022). Oral presentation. International Society for Computational Biology Student Council Webinar series (See details here).
  3. HerrCompBioinfo: An open-source educational resource of computational tools for Bioinformatics enthusiasts written in Spanish. (2022). Oral presentation. 4th cohort of Open Life Science Graduation (See details here).
  4. The molecular basis of JAZ-MYC coupling, a protein-protein interface essential for plant response to stressors. (2021). Oral presentation. 6th Brazilian Student Council Symposium: Omics and Data Science (See details here).
  5. In silico detection of horizontal gene transfer in Streptomyces clavuligerus. (2020). Oral presentation. International Society for Computational Biology Student Council Webinar series (See details here).
  6. Structural changes due to a mutation in Cereblon might be a cause for intellectual disability. (2019). Poster presentation. Global Intern Program - Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (See details here).

Honors and Awards

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

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.

Leadership and Service

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

Current - 2020

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).

Note: I have developed other personal projects related to data science, machine learning, drug discovery, and other topics (See details here).