welcome!

My name is Laura and I am a German-Catalan Biology Ph.D. candidate at the California Institute of Technology in the US. After earning my bachelor's and master's degrees in microbiology and biotechnology at Leiden University in The Netherlands, I followed my passion for genetics and entered the world of computational biology. Currently, I am developing a pipeline for the detection of viral sequences in next-generation sequencing data in the laboratory of Prof. Lior Pachter. I am passionate about bridging the gap between biology and bioinformatics, having worked in both wet lab and computer science roles. My most recently published program, gget, facilitates access to large genomic databases and has been downloaded over 40,000 times. When I am not busy detecting bugs, you can find me hiking in the San Gabriel Mountains.

This website is an introduction to who I am, providing a summary of my background, my favorite hobby, and my research.