About
I am a molecular anthropologist with a keen interest in population genetics and evolutionary biology. I earned my B.Sc. in Biotechnology and M.Sc. in Anthropology from TEC-Tecnológico de Costa Rica- and the University of Costa Rica, respectively. I earned my Ph.D. in Archaeology at the University of Calgary in Canada, where I applied mitochondrial aDNA analysis on pre-Columbian skeletal samples from Central America and Mexico to address questions about ancestry and past population movements. My dissertation was funded through a Wadsworth Fellowship awarded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation of the United States. Then, I was awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Center for Evolution & Medicine, Arizona State University, where I was co-advised by a computational population geneticist (Dr. Jeffrey Jensen) and a molecular anthropologist (Dr. Anne Stone). I used population genetic modeling and approximate Bayesian statistical analyses to establish an evolutionary null model for within-host Mycobacterium tuberculosis and extended these analyses to include other human pathogens, such as Influenza A virus (IAV) and cytomegalovirus. I currently work as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the IGC, in Portugal, where I am advised by a population geneticist (Dr. Claudia Bank).
