Members

María del Carmen Marín Pérez, PhD

She earned her BSc in Chemistry with honors in 2014 at the University of Jaén (Spain), and her MSc in Characterization of Chemical Systems in 2015 at the University of Alcalá (Madrid, Spain). She obtained an international PhD scholarship (2015-2018) at the University of Siena (Italy) with Prof. Olivucci, focusing on solving genomics challenges by developing and appliying a semi-automatic protocol (ARM protocol) for constructing QM/MM models for rhodopsin-type proteins. She performed a research stay of 6 months at Bowling Green State University (USA) to enlarge her background in theoretical simulations and predictions. In 2019, she received her PhD (excellent cum laude) and continued as a Researcher Fellow and contributed to her department's recognition with a national research grant“Department of Excellence 2018-2022”.

She then pursued international postdoctoral fellowships, including one in Japan (JSPS International Postdoctoral Fellowship) where she collaborated with Prof. Inoue at the ISSP – The University of Tokyo for a research period of 24 months (2020-2022). There, she integrated computational modeling techniques with advanced experimental spectroscopic methods to understand the spectral tuning mechanism of microbial rhodopsin proteins. To expand her research line and understand how some of those new rhodopsins were found, in 2023, she joined Prof. Béjà group at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology (Israel) to enhance her research into the bioinformatics and marine ecologyfields. She was awarded an international postdoctoral fellowship from the Azrieli Foundation for a research period of 20 months (2023-2024) including a short research stay of 3 months at the ISSP (Japan, 2024). Her research involves the spectroscopic characterization of newly discovered rhodopsins.

She has consolidated her leadership and independence as Principal Investigator FEDER UJA Talent and most recently she became Ramón y Cajal Researcher at the University of Jaén (Spain), where she leads the new OPTGENROD research line.