Please, keep an eye on our join page to see what opportunities are currently available.
Adrian Hirt, MSc. Student
After my undergraduate studies in agricultural and animal sciences at the University of Göttingen, I studied an international MSc in Food Systems with a semester each in Turin, Warsaw, and Madrid. I concluded the degree with a Master’s thesis in the Computational Systems Biology Group at the CNB. Parallel to my studies, I’ve co-founded two non-profit organisations in the alt protein space (The Alt Protein Project at EIT Food and Agricultura Celular España) and work part-time as an R Developer. I have a keen interested in all things future foods, food-biotech, and open-source. To dive deeper into the science enabling a future of sustainable, animal-free agriculture, I’m currently completing a second MSc in biophysics at the Autonomous University of Madrid.
Alberto Pascual-García, PI
I am physicist with (real) interest in biology. I did my PhD in the Centre for Molecular Biology Severo Ochoa in Madrid (CSIC-UAM) under the supervision of Dr. Ugo Bastolla. After my PhD, I spent two years as a postdoctoral researcher the Microbial Ecology laboratory of Imperial College London, led by Prof. Thomas Bell, to then move to the Theoretical Biology group at ETH-Zürich, headed by Prof. Sebastian Bonhoeffer. I was a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin in 2021-2022, and I moved back to Spain in 2023 to lead the Integrative Biology laboratory at the National Centre for Biotechnology. Among my hobbies, rugby has taken up the most of my time and health, followed by dancing night and morning, the mountains and changing diapers.
Antonio Araiz, Research Assistant
I am MSc student deeply interested in interdisciplinary and innovative solutions for biotechnological problems. I am currently studying the relationship between composition, function and stability of bacterial communities. My aim is to understand the role of microbial functional groups to potentially use stable bacterial consortia as biotechnological tools. Out of the lab, I love going to the theater, reading and playing sports.
Diego Alcón, PhD. Student
My motivation has always been learning while I can. That’s what drove me to study Physics, and then I wanted to learn how biology works in a physical way. That’s what led me to do my master’s in Biophysics. Currently, I’m interested in microbial ecology because it’s a field where I think I can apply the knowledge I acquired in my career, but who knows what tomorrow holds? On a personal level, I’m interested in a lot of things like playing video games, role-playing and tabletop games, as well as playing the violin, and learning other instruments, and so on.
Karim Ahmed, JAE intro scholarship
My goal in life is to develop myself in many different disciplines. Academically and professionally, I want to learn as much as I can in the fields of microbiology any tools I can use to make a more sustainable future. I am currently exploring computational tools. In my free time, I love to listen to music, go dancing, play sports and create some kind of art.
Alumni
- Laura Prieto, BSc. student (Universidad Europea de Madrid)
- Daria Lipsky, MSc. student (ETH-Zürich). Currently intern at Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.
- Rahel Müller, MSc. student (ETH-Zürich).
- Nicolas Oschner, MSc. student (ETH-Zürich). Now Ph.D student at ETH-Zürich
- Florian Dolci, BSc. student (ETH-Zürich).
- Léo Buchenel, MSc. student (ETH-Zürich). Now Senior Consultant at Amstein-Walter.
- Nikos Papanikolau, MSc. student (ETH-Zürich) Now PhD. student at Universität Mainz in Germany.
- David Scott, MSc. student (Imperial). Now PhD. student at University of Leicester in the UK.
- Katie Hidson, MSc. student (Imperial, L’Oreal prize to the best women’s Thesis).
- Javier Corz, MSc. student (Imperial). Now Principal Bioinformatician at ConcertBio
- Alfonso Núñez Delgado, MSc. student (UAM). Now head of the HPC scientific computing service at ICMAT.