I am a -Ronin- computational Biologist working in #evolution, #structural Bioinformatics, #Data integration, tool developments, and interested in #Zombification.
Currently I am Principal Investigator of the Computational Biology and Boinformatics Group (CBBio) at the Andalusian Center for Developmental Biology (CABD) since July 2018. The group is a garantor of the renewed accreditation of Excellence"Maria de Maeztu" Unit , from the SOMM alliance SOMMa.
I am a member of the board of the Function Special Interest Group , and a researcher of the firts Google Spain-Unviersity of Seville Chair for Artificial Intelligence. I am also a member of the executive board of the CSIC Hub for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics (2024), and a founder member of the Spanish Society of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (SeBiBIC)
Trained as molecular microbiologist, I became a #Bioinformatician and #Computational Biologist in different labs, and in different countries.
In my past: I have worked as forensic biologist, bird watcher, and field microbiologist. I have named a bacterial species.
Since 1998, I worked in several labs. I finished the experimental work of my PhD in Molecular Microbiology at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center (merged with the Burnham Institute) in the lab of Michael McClelland (currently at UCI ), a leading researcher on Salmonella and other Enterobacteria genomics. I continued to conduct posdoctoral research there when I earned a NASA-NSCORT fellowship, which allowed me to join Russell F. Doolittle's lab at UCSD , to enhance my knowledge in protein #Evolution. This constituted my transition to Computational Biology. Later I joined Adam Godzik's lab , as a Postdoctoral associate researcher to reinforce skills on #Structural #Bioinformatics, in particular #Protein Modeling, and #Protein Threading.
I returned back to Spain in 2003 at CNB-CSIC in Alfonso Valencia's (currently at BSC ), as a recipient of a Marie Curie International Reintegration Grant. There I focused on #Sequence Analyses and #Protein families. In 2006 I was appointed as Staff Scientist of Alfonso Valencia's group at CNIO, a postition that lasted 3 years.
I became independent Group Leader in 2009 at the former Institute for Predictive and Personalized Medicine of Cancer (IMPPC Directed then by Prof. Manuel Perucho, and now merged with IGTP ). In 2013 I joined the Institute of Biomedicine of Seville as a Senior Principal Investigator. In 2017 I earned a Científico Titular (civil servant) position at CSIC .
Over the last years, my activities within the Group were related to research, although I've been involved in support as well.
I am Associate Editor of Nucleic Acid Research Genomics and Bioinformatics [NARGAB] , a new sister journal of NAR.