Sandra Álvarez Carretero

Sandra obtained a BSc in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Rovira I Virgili University, in Spain, and then an MSc in Bioinformatics at Högskolan I Skövde, in Sweden. Ever since then, her research has focused on integrating her two areas of interest: biology and informatics.

As part of her BSc and MSc dissertations, Sandra worked on the development of software pipelines to perform virtual screenings (proteomics), characterise bacterial isolates based on whole-genome sequencing data (genomics), and analyse transcriptomic, proteomic, and whole-genome sequencing data. She then started her PhD in Computational Biology at Queen Mary University of London, where she worked on the application of Bayesian MCMC statistical methods to infer species divergence times by integrating molecular and morphological quantitative data. From 2020 to 2022, Sandra was a PDRA at University College London (UCL), where she continued her research on timetree inference while furthered her understanding of analyses on positive selection. She was also on a teaching secondment during her last year at UCL. She then joined the University of Bristol (UoB) as a Senior Research Associate in Phylogenomics, where she developed and applied new methods to process and analyse genome-scale datasets for deep timetree inference with the aim to unravel the patterns of early evolution. Currently, she is back to UCL as a Research Fellow, where she is focusing on the implementation of MCMC algorithms for timetree inference, the assembly of empirical datasets to study human speciation and diversification (aDNA), the timescale of vertebrate terrestrialisation, and reconstructing the eukaryotic Tree of Life. Her ultimate goal is to ensure that all the computational tools that she develops as part of the projects she is involved in are well documented, user-friendly, and reproducible. You can find more about her research on her personal website: https://sabifo4.github.io/

Sandra has been an SRUK/CERU member since 2017, when she first joined the SRUK/CERU London working group. In 2018, she joined the former Press Department as the London press officer and as a blog editor. She is the former Secretary of the SRUK/CERU London constituency (2019-21) and the former director of the former Press Department (2021-23). Since 2019, she has been the co-editor-in-chief of the SRUK/CERU Blog and started to be deeply involved in the SRUK/CERU’s website management and development. Currently, she maintains and develops the three websites the Society owns (i.e., main SRUK/CERU website where you are reading this bio, the SRUK/CERU Members Zone, and this Society’s Symposium Website) as the SRUK/CERU Website Manager, a position she has held since 2020. In 2024, she co-founded the SRUK/CERU Evolution Committee with the aim to connect SRUK/CERU members that work in evolution, promote outreach in this research field, and foster collaborations between Spain and the United Kingdom while organising discussion groups, mini symposia, and other scientific activities related to evolution (e.g., phylogenomics, systematics, palaentology, etc.).