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I am a biochemist and bioinformatician trained at the Biology Faculty of the University of Havana, Cuba. After my graduation, I joined the National Bioinformatics Center (BIOINFO) as an Associate Researcher of the Computational Genomics Group in 2002. My main research interests have been focused on the study of the mechanisms of transcriptional regulation in eukaryotes and prokaryotes. While at BIOINFO I was part of an international cooperation project involving the National Laboratory for Scientific Computing (LNCC) at Petrópolis, Brazil, and the Center for Genomic Sciences (CCG) at the National Autonomous University of Mexico for the bioinformatics study of the mechanisms of transcription regulation in gamma-proteobacteria. I completed my Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 2014 at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular and Cellular Biology of the University of Zaragoza and the Institute for Biocomputation and Physics of Complex Systems, with a research project related to a bioinformatics study of protein conformational flexibility and misfolding, and the prediction of the pathologic effect of mutations in conformational diseases.

In 2014, after completing my doctorate, I moved to Luxembourg to join the Computational Biology Group, at the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine from the University of Luxembourg. There, as a Research Associate, I coordinated a CORE Project, funded by the Fonds National de la Recherche (FNR), for the use of network models in the study of the underlying regulatory mechanisms, at the transcriptional and epigenomics levels, determining key processes such as cell differentiation and development.

After 3 years in Luxembourg, I took a thrilling challenge and moved to Singapore to take a position as a Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore (NUS), where I worked under the supervision of Prof. Daniel G. Tenen at the Cancer Science Institute (CSI). By joining this international, multicultural, and highly dynamic research environment focused on performing basic and translational cancer studies to devise more effective cancer treatments, I had the great opportunity to make the round trip from the ‘dry’ hard-core computational biology field in which I’ve been working for more than 15 years, and return to a more ‘wet’ experimental and clinically oriented environment, very similar to that in which I was trained as a Biochemist. At CSI I contributed bioinformatics analyses to study how non-coding RNAs exert a regulatory role on transcription through modulating the DNA methylation profile of specific loci, and how dysregulations in these ncRNAs-mediated pathways play a key role in triggering the onset and progression of cancer, such as acute myeloid leukemia (AML).

After completing a rewarding and fulfilling tenure at the Cancer Science Institute (CSI), in 2020 I took yet another leap in my professional career by transitioning to the private sector, accepting a position as Scientific and Academic Consultant at Cardiomix S.r.l., a startup company founded at Policlinico San Donato, Milano. In this new endeavor, I've joined a multidisciplinary team of physicians, cell biologists, biochemists, and artificial intelligence specialists, led by Prof. Carlo Pappone, in a project focused on the clinical, translational, and molecular study of Brugada Syndrome and Sudden Death. In this new role, I'll be involved in the research and development of Systems Biology and Translational Medicine projects aimed at the integration of genetic, functional genomics, and clinical data to disentangle the molecular bases of these serious and rare cardiovascular diseases. My work will be circumscribed within a much broader and ambitious goal for linking clinical electrophysiological observables obtained from patients and "healthy" subjects (e.g. from clinically-performed electrocardiograms in the former or self-tracking using modern-day wearables, such as Apple Watches in the latter) with OMICS data by combining genomics analyses, machine learning, and artificial intelligence approaches, to uncover the underlying molecular dysregulations, and genomic structural variations underpinning Brugada and other Sudden Deaths related syndromes. I'm currently living in beautiful Singapore, where I also hold a position as Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Computational Biology, at DUKE-NUS Medical School, in the group of Assoc. Prof. Enrico Petretto.