About me
My passion for science and plants goes back to my childhood times near Barcelona, where I was born. As a kid, I was always drawn to nature and curious of how things work in the natural world. That experience let me to pursue a degree in biology, a masters in terrestrial ecology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and, later on, a PhD in Anna Sala's lab at the University of Montana. Currently, I am a postdoc at Jeannine Cavender-Bares' lab.
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I want to understand why do plants die and find the key physiological factors that can predict when plants will die from drought. Some of these factors include the amount of water within living tissues of plants, the quantity of air bubbles in their vascular system, and the amount of sugars that plants have stored to use during times of stress.
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I am also interested in the role that other living organisms such as fungi or bark beetles can have on amplifying or reducing stress and affect risk of tree mortality.
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With my research, I aim to provide tools to forecast tree mortality at a global scale by understanding processes that occur at scales smaller than a tree.
ABOUT THIS WEBSITE
If science is not reaching the general public, our job is worthless. As a scientist, I believe that one of the reasons why people are skeptical of well established facts such as climate change or evolution is because we do not communicate well with general audiences. We often have to explain what we do to friends and family and we always have a hard time transmitting how exciting and interesting our science is. When that happens, we tend to excuse ourselves with thoughts like ''people can't understand what I do because they don't know science''. That is wrong. Everybody has been curious about nature and science at some point in their lives because it is genuinely interesting. It is part of our job to be able to explain what we do to the general public in a way that is understandable and interesting. Because only by educating people we can get them to appreciate the value of science.
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In my website, I try to bridge the gap between the scientific community and the general public by explaining my projects in a way that both scientists and non-scientists can find appealing. While the projects are written in a plain language that everyone can understand, they also have all the content that scientists are interested in such as the papers that result from each project. In the outreach section of the website, you can find projects that allow people to experience science in a more engaging way such as collaborations with artists, games that explain scientific principles while you play them, podcasts, and photography. You can help me spread the seed of knowledge by sharing all those contents in your social networks!