Maria Barreira Gonzalez graduated in Biology at the University of Oviedo in 2007 after spending an academic year at the University of Poitiers (France) as part of the ERAMUS program. In 2008, she was awarded with a JAE-predoc fellowship by the Spanish Research Council (CSIC) allowing her to pursue her PhD studies in the laboratory of Dr. Xose R. Bustelo at the Cancer Research Centre (CSIC-University of Salamanca). She obtained her PhD from the University of Salamanca which main focus was to understand how the Vav family of oncoproteins, involved in many human diseases such as cancer, are regulated upon cell signalling activation. In 2013, she moved to the UK to work as a postdoctoral researcher in the Hendrich Lab based at the Wellcome Trust – MRC Stem Cell Institute, University of Cambridge. There she studies how embryonic stem cells make decisions during mouse embryo development focusing on how these processes are controlled by gene regulation and cell signalling events. In October 2016, she moved to London to work as a researcher in a DNA-focused biotech company called Touchlight Genetics.

Just one week after arriving in the UK, she joined the SRUK as a regular member and since 2014 she has been part of the Cambridge and London SRUK working group, the SRUK Press Office, the Online department and the organising committee of the SRUK Symposium 2017. Currently, she is the Director of Communications and Online Department and the Editor in Chief of the SRUK blog.

Fidel Alfaro studied Computer Sciences at Universidad de Granada (Spain) in 2006, obtained a Masters Degree in Artificial Intelligence from UNED (Spain) in 2011, and is completing his DPhil in Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Oxford.

Between those degrees he worked as a Software Engineer in Spanish private consultancy companies and spent a year at CERN (Switzerland) with a fellowship from the Spanish Government. He has worked in brain imaging analysis in Madrid (2011 to 2013) and Oxford (2013 to present day) where he started his DPhil.

His research is focused on developing fully automated analyses tools for the UK Biobank Project, the largest brain imaging study to date, with 6 different brain imaging modalities acquired from 100,000 subjects. In this project his aim is to develop new methods for multimodal-imaging population modelling using supervised machine learning methods, with the ultimate goal being to find early biomarkers of brain diseases.

His personal interests include science policy, public engagement and science communication, making him join the Working Group from Oxford Constituency, the Science Policy Department and the committees for the 4th, 5th and 6th International Symposium SRUK/CERU. Some days he has time to sleep.

He always feels weird when he writes about himself in the third person.

ResearchGate Profile

University of Oxford Profile

Twitter: @NeuroFidelity

I graduated in Biology and Biochemistry at the University of Salamanca and I completed a PhD programme at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) in Madrid in the Molecular Cytogenetics Group where I developed different research projects in haematological malignancies. Since August 2015, I work as a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Haemato-Oncology at Barts Cancer Institute (BCI) of the Queen Mary University of London, identifying and studying the genetic events that lead to the development of familial acute myeloid leukaemia.

I have been a member of SRUK since I arrived to London, actively participating in various events and being part of the Organizing Committee for the 4th International Symposium SRUK/CERU and the SRUK Mentoring Programme.

David M. Gutierrez Estevez obtained his Engineering Degree in Telecommunications (Hons.) from the Universidad de Granada, Spain, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, USA, the latter supported by graduate fellowships from Fundacion la Caixa and Fundacion Caja Madrid in Spain.

He developed his Ph.D. thesis at the Broadband Wireless Networking Laboratory on the topic of interference analysis and mitigation for heterogeneous cellular networks under the supervision of Prof. Ian F. Akyildiz, obtaining the Researcher of the Year Award in 2013 for outstanding research contributions. From Sept. 2014 to Sept. 2015, David worked for Huawei Technologies as Principal Research Engineer in Silicon Valley on topics in the area of cloud computing.

Previous to that, David had held an internship position at the Corporate R&D Division of Qualcomm as well as research assistant and intern positions at Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute and Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits, both in Germany. Since January 2016, David is a Senior 5G Researcher at Samsung Electronics R&D Institute UK, where he leads Samsung’s involvement in several European research projects of the Horizon 2020 framework in 5G as well as other standardisation activities. David’s published work accumulates over 650 citations, his H-index is 8, and he is co-inventor of several patents and patent applications.

Marie Curie Fellow

MRC Centre for Molecular Bacteriology and Infection (MRC CMBI), Imperial College London

Patricia Bernal currently works at Imperial College London. She did her PhD in a centre of the Spanish National Research Council in Granada, Spain. After a first postdoctoral position in UCL, London, she went back to Spain with a Juan de la Cierva fellowship. Afterwards, she joined Imperial College as a Talent Hub and next as a Marie Curie Fellow. Her research project focus on a novel bacterial secretion system used for biological control agents to protect crops.