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.