Mª Carmen Ocana

Bachelor in Biology in 2014 and PhD in Biology in 2020 by the University of Málaga, Spain. Additionally, because I am also interested in nutrition, environmental matters and animal welfare, I am on the verge of obtaining a Dietitian certificate. Since I was a student I was interested in Science, and I started to participate in different laboratories at the university since the second year of my degree. During these first years, I learned basic laboratory skills, including the use of cell cultures, specially focused on experiments for the study of angiogenesis. Afterwads, with my Masters project I opened a new field of study in the laboratory, regarding the metabolic characteristics of tumor and endothelial cells, which continued with my PhD. As a result of my PhD Thesis I have published 3 review articles and 3 original research articles, and there are several manuscripts pending publication. Moreover, I have participated in several national and international scientific conferences, collaborations which resulted in additional scientific publications, writing of book chapters and popular science articles, teaching in different university degrees and invitations to give different talks to the students about different topics. Furthermore, I performed a 5-days national stay at Marta Cascante's laboratory (Barcelona, Spain) and a 3-months international stay at Ralph DeBerardinis' laboratory (Dallas, USA). The skills acquired during my PhD Thesis include advanced experience in management of cell cultures and different Cell and Molecular Biology techniques (such as Western blot, immunofluorescence, RNA extraction and qPCR, flow cytometry, extracellular flux analyzer Seahorse, measurement of 14C, metabolomics, 13C flux analysis...). After my PhD Thesis defense, I started working as a technician in the Clinical and Traslational Research in Cancer Group, at the Biomedical Research Institute of Málaga (IBIMA), where I still work. In this laboratory I have learned to manage patient samples (paraffinembedded (FFPE) blocks of tissues and liquid biopsies), as well as several techniques using nCounter Gene Expression Panels and Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies.