Profile

Most of the time, I live in York with two awesome flatmates and sometimes in Prague, with my awesome girlfriend. I’m originally from Mexico and, thanks to science, I’ve also lived in Cuba and the UK. I love playing video games and programming, and I also really love movies. I started Uni thinking I would be a film director, but neuroscience snatched my heart. One of my favourite things in the world is laughing. I watch a lot of comedy programmes (some of my favourites are Family Guy, Bigmouth, Futurama, BoJack Horseman and old seasons of The Simpsons) and I waste unholy amounts of time searching for my favourite stand-up comedian’s old rare gigs in YouTube for anything I haven’t seen. I’m also a podcast addict, subscribed to around 100 podcasts which I try to listen to every week. I’m currently locked in my house for six weeks because I was smart enough to fracture my kneecap cleaning the kitchen so I’m bored out of my mind. Luckily I can work from home and chat to you guys to keep my sanity.

I work in York’s Neuroimaging Centre and Department of Psychology as a 4th year PhD student in Cognitive Neuroscience and  Neuroimaging. I plan and design experiments with my awesome supervisors, Beth Jefferies and Jonny Smallwood. During these, we try to figure out how the mind works in relation to the brain, so we normally come up with some psychological task (pretty simple stuff usually, like ‘press a button if I show you an animal, don’t press it if I show you a man-made object’) and scan people in an MRI machine while they perform it, so we can take a look at their brain activity. I’m also an MRI operator, which means I get to put people in those machines and scan them. And when we’ve collected enough data, we take some time off to analyse it and think what it all means, and write a paper and present our findings in conferences. I also teach 1st, 2nd and 3rd year university students (Psychology) as part of my work, which is really cool because I like talking to people about science.

I’ll wake up in a rush, having slept less than six hours due to wasting time online last night looking at random stuff on the internet or playing games; I’ll grab a quick bite for breakfast and walk to Uni for around 40 minutes (I love this long walk part of my day!) listening to podcasts. What I do in uni depends pretty much on the day, so I don’t have a ‘typical day’. Some days I’ll be in the Neuroimaging Centre scanning my participants or helping other people perform their scans, or in the Maths Skills Centre, where I work helping people with statistics or programming. Most days I’ll head straight to my office in Psychology, where I’ll be on my computer writing or analysing data. I’ll usually have meetings with my supervisors and lab mates to move projects forward or plan ahead for future stuff, or go to seminars and talks when there’s something interesting. All in all, I’d say I have pretty diverse and fun days!