I was born in Merida-Venezuela, where I completed my undergraduate studies at the Los Andes University. I did my PhD in the lab of Harrie Kampinga at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, where my research focused on the identification and characterization of the main protein quality control mechanisms that somatic and stem cells use to deal with disease-related misfolded and aggregated proteins. At this point, I became interested in Drosophila as a model organism to study neural development and stem cell biology and joined the lab of Renata Basto at the Institut Curie in Paris to pursue my postdoc. Here my research was focused on the morphogenesis of Drosophila neuroepithelium and the role of Asp –a microcephaly-associated protein- in neural development. Then I joined Matias Simons lab in the Institut Imagine in Paris where using Drosophila as a model I studied the pathomechanisms underlying rare metabolic diseases (CDG) and neurodevelopmental disorders (microcephaly and lissencephaly). Now, I joined the lab of Pauline Speder at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, where I am trying to characterize the dynamics and roles of glial cells during neural stem cell niche morphogenesis in Drosophila.
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