Universidad de Concepción · Faculty of Engineering · Computer Science Department
VIDALAB is an interdisciplinary lab at the intersection of computation and the life sciences, where we tackle real-world problems with data science and artificial intelligence, from genomics and immunology to environmental resilience.
We believe good science is built collectively. The lab brings together students, researchers and collaborators at different career stages: whether it is a first-year student learning to code or a PhD candidate developing a novel model, everyone contributes to — and learns from — the lab's collective knowledge. Our projects are shaped by partnerships with academic institutions, public agencies and industry, and supported by competitive research funding.
Our mission is to answer one question across many living systems: how does an organism respond to pressure from its environment, and what can be recovered from the data it leaves behind? We pursue it by building methods that transfer across systems, and by training the people who will carry them further.
I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Universidad de Concepción, Chile, where I serve on the board of the Center for Data and Artificial Intelligence (CDIA). I hold a PhD in Computer Science from Universidad de Concepción and an engineering degree in bioinformatics from Universidad de Talca, a double origin that defines how I work. I build machine learning and deep learning methods, but I build them around biological questions.
Across apparently unrelated systems, my research asks how does a living organism respond to pressure from its environment, and what can be recovered from the data it leaves behind? That question runs through the mucosal immunity of Atlantic salmon under seasonal temperature and sea-lice infestation, the inflammatory response of patients recovering from COVID-19, the signaling exchange between bacteria and tumor cells, and the regulatory programs plants deploy under drought.
I participate in eight graduate programs at Universidad de Concepción, teaching and supervising across all of them. That spread is less a curiosity than a working method: a method worth building is one that transfers. Alongside research, I have worked since 2020 with Niñas Pro, a Chilean nonprofit for gender equity in computing.
Former members who carried out their research and thesis work at VIDALAB.
We are always looking for curious and motivated people to join our team.
