I am a Tenure-track Associate Professor in Computer Sciences at the University of Murcia (Spain). I hold a PhD in Computer Sciences from the University of Almeria (Spain) through a grant from the Spanish State Agency of Research (AEI). In 2014, I started a postdoc at Prof. Baumeister's lab at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry (Germany), initially founded by Fundación Seneca, and finished at the University Medical Center of Göttingen. After two years of holding an Assistant Professor position at the University of Oviedo, 2020-2022, I got a Ramon y Cajal grant in 2023 (Spanish excellence program for Tenure-track positions) for moving to my current position at the University of Murcia. Here, I am the principal investigator of several research and technology transference projects.

Cryo-Electron Tomography (cryo-ET) is a unique imaging technique that provides visual proteomics, the ability to visualize protein molecules in the cell in 3D and monitor changes in their structure, quantity, distribution, and interactions. Comprehensive visual proteomics can revolutionize biomedicine since it can bridge the gap between structural and cellular biology, being key to understanding what causes diseases and finding treatments and cures.

3D Image Analysis: 3D electron microscopy, and particularly cryo-ET, remains challenging for the current state-of-the-art image processing and computer vision due to many factors like the high levels of noise, the nature of distortions, the complexity of the scenes, working with massive volumetric data, as well as the extreme accuracy required. I develop new computer approaches to pursue effective and comprehensive visual proteomics from cryo-ET data.

Applied mathematics for image processing: extending the current state-of-the-art for image processing needs to revise the mathematical foundations of the algorithms. I am also interested in adapting the latest advances in mathematics to solve bottlenecks in image processing algorithms.

Computing for molecular biology: During my postdoc at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry (Germany), I worked on the application of advanced computational methods to solve open questions in molecular biology, neurobiology, and biomedicine. I continue this research line by collaborating with biologists to identify which questions can be solved by applied computer sciences.

A complete list of my publications can be found in: