~~~~ News ~~~~
----------------------------- December 2024 -----------------------------
The new year is almost here, and it's time for a recap again. Personally, it's been a great year. Argentina won the Copa America, Spain won the Euro, family is doing well and I got a better grip on my stress. Academically, it's been a good year. Two publications and two submissions isn't a bad balance taking into account experiments and fieldwork were still going on. Can't imagine how it would be to have time only for writing (probably not great either...). Speaking seriously, 2024 has brought many new experiences and I feel the personal growth has been real. In summer 2024, we nailed fieldwork together with Michael Yun, Julián and my dad. None, of these would have been possible without the one and only, Becky Fuller. This year I had a blast at the very international Annual Evolution Meeting in Montreal, meet some fantastic researchers and great people to hang out with such as Kathryn Elmer, Andreas Härer, Fred Henning, Arne Jacobs, Hans Recknagel and many others (Sorry I can't remember all names). Happy for the new collaborations this year and looking forward to new ones! Besides that, the legendary Trevor Price visited us at Notre Dame and gave a lovely seminar on Himalayan birds (another destination added to my bucket list). Finally, I am really excited to join the Notre Dame Environmental Research Initiative as a Frontlines Graduate Fellow for our interdisciplinary project in Peru. By the way, I am officially a PhD Candidate so thanks to my committee members: Becky Fuller, Stuart Jones (with his brand new director position, yay!), Mike Pfrender and Julián Torres-Dowdall. More news to come. Happy New Year and stay safe!
----------------------------- May 2024 -----------------------------
Getting ready for fieldwork it is time to look back at this couple of months. First, the incredible news that my first, first author paper regarding opsins is finally out! And I couldn't be more happy that it got published in the one and only American Naturalist! Second, I'm over the moon to announce that the American Museum of Natural History awarded our project looking at the ecological impacts of non-native cichlid fishes in Florida waters. Hence, we'll be heading to Florida to look at the interplay between native centrarchids and invasive cichlids and how environmental conditions shape their interactions. For this, I'll have the irreplaceable help of Michael Yun, who was awarded a COS-SURF from the University of Notre Dame, Julian Torres-Dowdall, aka the master of the cast nets and last but not least, my own father as the angling expert. Also, I'll be heading to the 3rd Joint Congress on Evolutionary Biology in Montreal thanks to funding provided by the University of Notre Dame Graduate Student Government and the Professional Development Awards! Extremely excited to present my work at this epic conference with all the main evolution societies!! Finally, it was a great pleasure to mentor soooo many undergraduates this term! We hosted the Cell Research Class in our lab with three excellent students; Amelia Dibert, David Pavlenshvili and Jillian Hinck, working on plasticity rates of opsin gene expression. We also had Anna Wang and Erin Flannigan present their poster on bluegill opsin gene expression across environmental gradients at the Notre Dame's College of Science Joint Annual Meeting. Good luck to all of you in your future endeavours!
----------------------------- December 2023 -----------------------------
The year is ending and it seems a good time to recap! The second half of 2023 was a busy time with lots of fieldwork and new projects. In June, I had the pleasure to attend Evolution 2023 together with my advisor and present for the first time live at the conference. During the annual conference, I had the chance to hear about many fascinating research, and thanks to the ASN Grad Mixer, I met a naturalist I truly admire, Prof. Becky Fuller. Becky did not only accept to be on my advisory committee but we also started a collaboration involving research in Florida aquatic habitats...so stay tuned for very cool research coming out soon!!! Additionally, I had the opportunity to spend a whole week at Cornell with the world expert in fish visual systems and physiology, the one and only Dr. Ellis Loew. Fascinating to use his own microspectrophotometer and navigate fish retinas in search of visual pigments! Finally, I had a blast at the EEB Seminar at UIUC attending my advisor's guest talk and interacting with their great faculty (special mention to Dr. Eva Fischer and her beautiful frogs!). As a highlight of the year, presenting at Sensorium 2023 was an incredible venue to meet renowned researchers such as Dr. Nate Morehouse and Dr. Trevor Price in this small but yet amazingly wide field of visual ecology! Looking forward to another year full of research and fish vision!
----------------------------- May 2023 -----------------------------
Spring term is over but fieldwork just got started! For a second summer in a row, I'm delighted to be able to do research at Notre Dame's Environmental Research Center as a Graduate Research Fellow. Lots of great ideas in the making together with the coolest team from the Jones Lab. Further, this summer is going to be even more exciting since I will also be doing whole-pond experiments at Notre Dame's Linked Ecosystem Experimental Facility thanks to their Research Grant funding our study on GxE interactions effects on bluegill population dynamics and their implications for tropic food webs. Last but not least, I will finally present for the first time my research in person at the Joint Annual Evolution Meeting this June in Albuquerque! This wouldn't be possible without the funding awarded by the American Society of Naturalists (ASN), the Graduate Student Government Conference Presentation Grant and the Notebaert Professional Development Fund. Grateful to kickstart my second year with so many exciting projects. Stay tuned for more integrative fish projects!!
----------------------------- December 2022 -----------------------------
My first winter term as a PhD is coming to an end and it feels about the right time to recapitulate some of the recent highlights! Thanks to being awarded a Zahm Professional Development Fund from the Graduate School I was able to attend ConGen 2022. The online workshop on Conservation Genetics, Population Genomics and Molecular Ecology was an incredible learning and networking experience. So grateful to be able to pick the brains of leading scientists in the field! Further, it was a Guppy-loaded term where our lab had the pleasure to attend incredible talks by Dr. Ron Bassar tackling the real eco-evo dynamics and Dr. Sarah Fitzpatrick groundbreaking work on genetic rescue. Also, on a personal note, Argentina just won the World Cup! Exciting research coming soon, Long live the Fish!
----------------------------- July 2022 -----------------------------
My PhD adventure at University of Notre Dame is just about to get officially started after a great summer of fieldwork at UNDERC East supported by an UNDERC Graduate Fellowship and the Merrilee Clark Redmond Endowment for Excellence. Special thanks to the Jones Lab, my fellow PhD Candidate Camille Mosley, our team of technicians and to the whole UNDERC Staff, specially to our Environmental Research Center Director Prof. Swenson. Next week, heading to Chattanooga for the 2nd Southeastern Computational Biology School on RNAseq and Transcriptomics. Can't wait!
----------------------------- Feb 2022 -----------------------------
Sometimes good things just come all together. I'm very happy to announce that I have been admitted to the Graduate Program in Biological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame where I will be starting my PhD under supervision of the great researcher (and better advisor) Dr. J. Torres-Dowdall.
To start with, I will be spending this summer at the University of Notre Dame Environmental Research (UNDERC) thanks to an UNDERC Graduate Fellowship to study the visual system of fish in the Northern Highlands. More news coming soon!
To start with, I will be spending this summer at the University of Notre Dame Environmental Research (UNDERC) thanks to an UNDERC Graduate Fellowship to study the visual system of fish in the Northern Highlands. More news coming soon!
ABOUT MEAn integrative visual ecologist for a lack of a better definitionEver since I was a kid I've been fascinated by nature. I grew up in a rural village in the Mediterranean Sea as a son of Argentinian immigrants. Santa Claus brought me my first toy microscope and so I started collecting insects and pine cones. After high school, I decided to pursue a degree in Biological Sciences at the University of Konstanz where I recently finished my Master's degree. Through my brief academic life, I've worked mainly with honeybees and cichlid fish, with a strong interest in ecology, behaviour and molecular evolutionary biology. Currently, I aim to combine genomic and ecological data with behavioural experiments to identify drivers of divergence in the visual system of fish.
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