Bachelors Degree in Engineering in Molecular Biotechnology (Universidad de Chile, Santiago)
PhD Biochemistry (Brussels, Belgium)
I’m originally from Chile and spent my childhood in the Chilean side of Patagonia amid the mountains between Chile and Argentina, running around forest and rivers always admiring nature’s wonders. I moved to Santiago and got my first degree on Engineering in Molecular Biotechnology, where I learnt to purify proteins and felt in love with their structures in the lab of Prof. Octavio Monasterio at Universidad de Chile.
In order get hands-on on protein structure determination I moved to Belgium and got my PhD with Prof. Joost Schymkowitz and Prof. Frederic Rousseau at University of Brussels. I stayed in the lab as a postdoc to understand what amyloids are, and inspired by Prof. Feynman words “what I cannot create, I do not understand”, we created synthetic amyloids with new antiviral, antibacterial and anti-tumour functions. The concept we created is the cornerstone of Aelin Therapeutics (the second biggest spinoff biotech in Flanders, Belgium).
With the application of cryo-EM to amyloids in 2017 we could for the first time observe what these structures looked alike right out of a human body. I remember intense feelings, blood rushing to my head, I needed to dominate the technique and decided to move to the Astbury Centre to learn all about cryo-EM and cryo-ET working with Prof. Neil Ranson and Prof. Sheena Radford and the amazing ABSL team.