Who are we?
Faculty
Jacobo Aguirre: CSIC Staff Researcher (Científico Titular del CSIC).
Students
Marina Fernández Ruz: She joined us in March 2021. Predoctoral student starting from January 2022 and former JAE Intro CSIC (March-July 2021). Master in Physics of Condensed Matter and Biological Systems at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (2020-2021). She developed her Master Thesis at Centro de Astrobiología (Interstellar phosphorus chemistry as a complex system: a theoretical approach to the formation of the simplest building blocks of life). For this work she won the third prize for the best scientific video in the “Space Factor Student Contest”, organised by the European Astrobiology Network association (EANA), and the best poster by the International Society for the Study of the Origins of Life, ISSOL 2021. She also received the “My thesis in 3 minutes” award at FISES'23 Conference on Statistical Physics in October 2023. In 2023 she published the paper
A Theoretical Approach to the Complex Chemical Evolution of Phosphorus in the Interstellar Medium, M Fernández-Ruz, I Jiménez-Serra and J Aguirre, Astrophysical Journal 956 47 (2023). Currently, her interests are focused on the emergence of life-like properties in chemical networks, such as autocatalysis, self-sustainability and compartment growth. If you want to contact her, email her at mfernandez{at}cab.inta-csic.es
Carla Alejandre Villalobos: She joined us in February 2023 with a 2 year contract of Ayudante de Investigación (Garantía Juvenil) de la Comunidad de Madrid. Graduated in Biotechnology (2020) with a Master in Computational Biology by the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (2021), she did her Master Thesis on the impact of epistasis networks in tumor evolution at the Centro de Biotecnología y Genómica de Plantas (CBGP). Her current research at CAB focuses on the study of a primordial non-enzymatic RNA replication in the context of the RNA world hypothesis, from the point of view of complexity theory. She received the “Best Poster Communication” award at FISES'23 Conference on Statistical Physics in October 2023. If you want to contact her, email her at calejandre{at}cab.inta-csic.es
Former members
2023
Marcos Martínez Jiménez: Graduated in Biotechnology (2022), Marcos developed the Master Thesis ''Study of a model for the origin of molecular complexity through explainable machine learning and statistical models'' in our group, during a JAE Intro CSIC internship from February to July 2023.
2022
Adrián Aguirre-Tamaral: Maria de Maeztu postdoctoral researcher, PhD in Physics. He stayed with us from February 2022 to July 2022.
Sofia Backlund: Erasmus + student from University of Helsinki (Finland), graduate in Biomathematics. She joined us in September 2021 and left the group in February 2022.