User:Francisco Camiña Ceballos

My name is Francisco C. Ceballos. I am from Spain, specifically from Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, in the north west of Spain. Santiago de Compostela is a small university city, our university (USC) is one of the oldest universities of the world (It was founded in 1495).

I studied Molecular Biology at USC. In Spain, Biology, is a five year degree, the first three years are dedicated to the study of the basis of biological science, the last two years are devoted to the specialization in any field of biological science - I chose Molecular Biology. During my degree, I worked as a research co-worker in several laboratories (both affiliated and non-affiliated to the university) and projects related to different fields of biological science: microbiology, genetic engineering and genetic improvement. After I finished my degree, in September of 2005, I started the graduate program in Population and Evolution Genetics. The average graduate program in Spain lasts at least five years, I obtained my MSc. in biology last year. I obtained this degree through the research project: “Inbreeding depression in the Spanish kings of the Austrian Dynasty”. The research project was developed in the Department of Genetics and it was supervised by Gonzalo Alvarez Jurado, head of this department.

At present I am working on two research projects in the Departments of Genetics and Molecular Biology in my university, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela. The first one is being developed in the Department of Genetics. It analyzes the relationship between the population structure of several royal families in Europe and their inbreeding coefficients and effects. The other project is being developed in the department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. This research work is about the phylogeny and population structure of the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) of the northern Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal). However, after finishing these projects (September of 2008) I’m moving to San Diego, to UCSD, to start their graduate program, my intention is to obtain my PhD there. Due to this change, I have to start both my thesis and the graduate program from scratch. Nonetheless, I do not view this situation as a pitfall. On the contrary, I embarked on this change because I want to work in evo-devo with William McGinnis, particularly in the phylogeny aspects of the cluster of the Hox genes and the evolution of the different biological archetypes.

In addition to my studies, I have several other interests. I practice a lot of sport, indeed I am black belt 2 Dan in Karate and a member of the Rugby team of my university. I also practice sailing, golf, free-diving, surf and snowboard.

You can add yourself to the author workgroups of your choosing. They will show up just below. To do that, just go to CZ:Discipline Workgroups and follow the directions.
You can remove this template message (it will look like {{czcategories}} when you edit this page) whenever you no longer need it.