Bio

I am a psychologist by training (Comillas Pontifical University), devoted to the study of the brain, one of the most nonlinear, complex systems we know. To even start thinking about it, I had to learn a lot of statistics and methods, and then fight for a PhD grant. I applied to every possible funding opportunity, and won a Spanish Government FPU grant and the Fundación Tatiana Pérez neuroscience fellowship. I accepted the latter, and enrolled in the PhD Program in Biomedical Engineering offered by the Technical University of Madrid, where I got in touch with a bunch of technical stuff related to time series analysis, frequency decomposition, imaging techniques and some biology for engineers. I found a scientific father in Javier Buldú professor at King Juan Carlos University, and head of the Laboratory of Biological Networks (Center for Biomedical Technology).

In my thesis dissertation I study the brain from the perspective of complex sciences, which in simple words means that we believe the brain is a huge number of simple elements continuously interacting between them in unpredictable, nonlinear ways. In practice, we analyse it building frequency-based, multilayer, functional networks obtained from the recorded activity of a particular task (or absent of it). My research team looks for patterns in the networks that differ between experimental conditions (Alzheimer, Schizophrenia, Adolescence development), and relate it to mathematical properties of the signals that reflect the balance of order and randomness of the system.

The PhD opened a lot of new, exciting doors: I met people from very different backgrounds (biologists, engineers and many, many physicists), visited new countries and worked hand to hand for three months with many amazing scientists at the BMU in Cambridge, UK, run by Prof. Ed Bullmore and Dr. Petra Vèrtes. There I applied the methods developed in my thesis project to a dataset on growing adolescents.

After a four-years adventure in a very technical scientific ecosystem, I’m looking back to my origins and realise that I want to apply and teach all the knowledge I have acquired in the journey. To this end, my next move is to apply for post doctoral funding and try to sneak into a good university with interdisciplinar research opportunities.