I was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. I completed my
bachelor studies in Biology there and this was my first approach to marine
microbiology, studying bacterial diversity and virulence in coral diseases. In
2012 I joined the International Max Planck Research School of Marine
Microbiology (MarMic) in Bremen, Germany. In my master thesis I studied the
effects of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC)
enrichments on particle aggregation in coral reef mesocosms, under the supervision
of Dr. Astrid Gärdes. Now I have the great opportunity to start my PhD thesis as
part of the ongoing collaboration between the Leibniz Center for Marine
Tropical Ecology (ZMT) and Christian
Voolstra’s group at the Red Sea Research Center. The
objective of my PhD thesis is to investigate the mechanisms used by marine heterotrophic
bacterioplankton to transform/consume DOC released by coral reef organisms as
well as anthropogenic inputs of DOC. Additionally I will investigate the
virulence gene expression under elevated DOC concentrations and its possible
role in disease emergence.