Hello and welcome to my website!

I am a post-doctoral fellow at Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social (IPHES).  My research interests are focused on the variability and ecological adaptation of dental morphology to different dietary regimes. Currently, my research aims to understand the sources of dental morphology variation in past European populations associated with population dynamics, dietary and cultural past changes.

My main expertise is in Geometric Morphometric methods and cutting-edge imaging technology applied to primate and human dental molars, but also in isotope analyses and ancient DNA methods.

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Overview of my education and research.

Originally from Barcelona, my education includes a Bachelor’s degree in Biology and a Master of Primatology at the University of Barcelona. I received my PhD in Biodiversity from the University of Barcelona in December 2014. My thesis explored the phylogenetic and adaptive implications of tooth shape variability in extant and fossil primates. Throughout my PhD, I was actively involved in several research projects concerning the study of dental morphology and ecological adaptations of primates in the Zoology and Anthropology Unit (Dept. Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences), at the University of Barcelona. In the course of my research training, I have attended several courses, as well as international and national meetings presenting the results of my research.

During these years, I have also visited several European osteological collections making tooth moulds and macrophotographs of living and fossil primate teeth. I had also the chance to collaborate in an international project in Gabon and participate in several field campaigns to obtain dental moulds.

I joined University College Dublin (Ireland) in 2015 as a Research Assistant and later as a Post-Doctoral Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellow in Prof. Ron Pinhasi’s research team (School of Archaeology). The project aimed to characterize the changes in dental traits of past Hungarian populations through 3D imaging and Geometric morphometric techniques and the factors influencing them. This experience allowed me to be trained in new techniques applied in Archaeology, such as the stable isotope analysis, and the new revolutionary approaches in ancient DNA.

Then, I held a  Beatriu de Pinós Fellowship (AGAUR-Generalitat of Catalonia) at IPHES where I started a new project on Dental Virtual Anthropology. This project aimed to study the dental morphology changes in past population of North East of Iberian Peninsula by analysing the inner dental tissues shape changes through time.

Currently, I continue working on Dental Virtual Anthropology at IPHES under the framework of Maria de Maeztu Unit of Excellence. My research is focused on the utility of the inner dental tissue’s morphology as a genetic proxy to understand population dynamics of Holocene European human populations.

If you want to know my research achievements in more details, you can check them in detail in Projects, Publications list, Conferences and CV links in this website.

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