I received my Ph.D. degree and my Bachelor's in Biology from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). During my Ph.D., I worked with Prof. Luis E. Eguiarte to study the evolutionary dynamics of pumpkin genomes using comparative and population genomics. Afterwards, I worked as a Humboldt Research Fellow in the Department of Algal Development and Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Biology (Tübingen, Germany) with Prof. Susana M. Coelho, where I worked on the evolution of brown algae (Phaeophyceae), a eukaryotic lineage that evolved complex multicellularity independently from plants or animals.  My lines of research as a PI include: evolutionary genomics, de novo gene birth, Cucurbita genomics and Sargassum genomics.