VALERIE DE ANDA
Research Associate at the University of Texas at Austin
Using microbial metabolism to understand the past, present and future outcomes of life on Earth
Welcome to my website
I am a Research Scientist at the University of Texas at Austin Marine Science Institute at the Baker Marine Microbial Ecology Lab, where I first started my appointment as a postdoctoral researcher in september 2018.
As a Mexican, first-generation female scientist, I care deeply about empowering students, especially underrepresented minorities to pursue careers in the sciences.
CV last updated Feb 2024 here
About me
I graduated with summa cum laude from the National Autonomous University of Mexico with a degree in Biology. During my undergraduate studies, I volunteered in a Molecular Biology lab at the Biomedical Research Institute UNAM Mexico, and received an academic excellence scholarship to study abroat at the University of Valencia in Spain where I did another research stay at the Cavanilles Institute of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology's Synthetic Biology Lab. I completed my undergraduate thesis on directed evolution of proteins at the Biotechnology Institute in Cuernavaca Mexico. Pursuing my interest in microbiology and environmental conservation, I obtained a doctorate from the Institute of Ecology, where I worked in the Experimental Molecular Evolution Lab at the Ecology Institute at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
During my PhD I spent two years in Laboratory of Computational and Structural Biology at EEAD-CSIC (Zaragoza, Spain) being coadvised by Dr. Bruno Contreras Moreira. During this time we developed MEBS, an algorithm that allows to infer the metabolic potential of thousands of genomes and metagenomes by using a single informative value or score.
News and updates
I started my scientific twiter during my PhD you can follow me on @val_deanda and or see all my updates here