Alejandro Fontal

Currently, I am a predoctoral researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) while I pursue my PhD in Biotechnology at the University of Barcelona (UB). My work is supported by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Fellowship under the HELICAL Innovative Training Network.

In my research project, I am utilizing a combination of time series analysis, GIS, metagenomics sequencing, and epidemiology to study the underlying causes of Kawasaki Disease, a pediatric syndrome that affects thousands of children each year, and whose etiology is still a mystery after over 50 years of being studied.

I hold a BSc in Molecular Biotechnology from the University of Barcelona and a MSc in Bioinformatics with a specialization in Data Science from the Wageningen University & Research.

I have previously worked on designing and implementing online courses on the EdX platform for the Educational Staff Development department in WUR, and as a Data Scientist in the R&D department of Dupont Nutrition & Biosciences, where we applied novel machine learning techniques to optimize the protein engineering process.

You can check my detailed CV for a more comprehensive overview of my professional experience.

I made this site using Quarto, an open source project that allows you to create documents, websites, and books using a combination of Markdown, R, Python and HTML.

I took it as a chance to improve my web development skills and tinker around with HTML/CSS and a tiny bit of JavaScript.

A lot of inspiration from other Quarto websites was taken to make this site. Mainly:

• Mickael Canouil’s personal website: I started from his SCSS and index files and worked from there.
• I copied the article.ejs script to automatically list publications by Jeffrey Girard in his AffComLab website and slightly modified it to suit my needs.

To check the source code, you can do so in Github. Please raise an issue if you notice something is wrong or not working as intended.