I am a Microbial Ecologist with extensive research experience on root endophytes (including Arbuscular Mycorrhizal fungi (AMF)), saprotrophic fungi, soil microbiomes, molecular biology and bioinformatics.

Research Interests

My research interests lie at the intersection of microbial ecology and sustainable agriculture. I study how environmental factors and land management practices influence soil, rhizosphere, and phyllosphere microbiomes and their impact on soil health and ecosystem functioning. The goal of my work is to understand how these microbial communities impact plant-microbe interactions, nutrient cycling, and soil health, and to apply this knowledge to enhance crop health and environmental sustainability through agroecological practices.

Top research areas from the last five years

AllEcoSys: Agroecology living labs fostering prosperous and sustainable agri-food systems. https://www.agroecologypartnership.eu/allecosys

SUSALPS: Sustainable use of alpine and pre-alpine grassland soils in a changing climate. https://www.susalps.de/en/

Professional Activities: Peer Reviewer for

• Applied and Environmental Microbiology,
• Symbiosis
• Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment
• Pedosphere
• Microbial Ecology
• One Earth
• Nutrient Cycling in Agroecosystems

My journey began in Colombia, a beautiful and diverse agroecosystem country, at the University of Los Andes in Bogotá, where I earned my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in microbiology. My early research focused on isolating and characterizing native bacterial strains (like Lysinibacillus sphaericus and Bacillus thuringiensis) for the biological control of mosquitoes and biodegradation of Hydrocarbons.

After working as a research assistant and laboratory instructor in plant pathology, I moved to Germany in 2006 on a DAAD fellowship. I pursued my Ph.D. at the Potsdam university in collaboration with the Leibniz Institute of Vegetable and Ornamental Crops (IGZ), where my doctoral research explored the interaction between root endophytic fungi and plants, analyzing their effect on plant growth and disease protection, e.g. against Verticillium dahliae. I also investigated the endophytic colonization of the basidiomycete Serendipita indica in tomato, barley and Arabidopsis, and its interaction with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF).

Following my Ph.D. in 2011, I continued as a postdoc at IGZ and later at the Free University of Berlin. Here, I investigated the "memory" of saprotrophic fungi in response to temperature stress and isolated soil fungi from temperate grasslands to establish a core set of cultivable fungi for ecological studies related to soil quality and nutrient uptake.

In 2018, I joined the Helmholtz Centre Munich, where I participated in the SUSALPS project, investigating the impact of climate change and land use intensity on soil microbiomes in pre-alpine grasslands, and their relationships to nutrient cycling, soil quality and plant biodiversity.

Currently, I am a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Limerick's Environmental Microbiology Research Group (EMRG). My work focuses on the effects of agroecological practices on soil and leaf microbiomes, collaborating with farmers to co-create "living labs" for hands-on research in the frame of the AllEcoSyst project.