Sandra Álvarez-Carretero

Sandra obtained a BSc in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Rovira I Virgili University, in Spain, and then an MSc in Bioinformatics at Högskolan I Skövde, in Sweden. Her research has since then focused on integrating her two areas of interest: biology and informatics.

She has worked developing software pipelines to perform virtual screenings (proteomics), to characterise bacterial isolates based on whole-genome sequencing data (genomics), and also to analyse transcriptomic, proteomic, and whole-genome sequencing data. She carried out her PhD in Computational Biology at Queen Mary University of London, where she worked on the application of Bayesian MCMC statistical methods to infer species divergence times by integrating molecular and morphological quantitative data. From 2020 to 2022, Sandra was a PDRA at University College London (UCL), where she continued her PhD research while furthered her understanding of positive selection analyses. She was also on a teaching secondment during her last year at UCL. Then, she joined the University of Bristol as a Senior Research Associate in Phylogenomics, where she developed and applied new methods for deep timetree inference with the aim to unravel the patterns of early evolution. Currently, she is an Honorary Research Fellow at UoB and has joined again UCL as a Research Fellow, where she shall continue her research on timetree inference, although now focusing on MCMC algorithms and the assembly of empirical datasets to study human speciation and diversification (aDNA), the timescale of vertebrate terrestrialisation, and reconstructing the eukaryotic Tree of Life. Ultimately, her goal is to ensure that all the computational tools that she develops as part of the projects she is involved in are well documented, user-friendly, and reproducible.

Sandra has been an SRUK/CERU member since 2017, when she first joined the SRUK/CERU London working group. In 2018, she joined the Press Department as the London press officer and as a blog editor, although this department and associated positions are no longer active. She is the former Secretary of the SRUK/CERU London constituency (2019-21), the former director of the Press Department (2021-23), and the former SRUK/CERU Treasurer (2024-25). From 2019 until 2025, she was the co-editor-in-chief of the SRUK/CERU Blog and was deeply involved in the SRUK/CERU's website management and development. For five years (2020-25), Sandra was the SRUK/CERU Website Manager and, alongside her academic duties and other volunteering tasks, she maintained and developed the three websites that, at the time of writing, the Society owns (i.e., main SRUK/CERU website, the SRUK/CERU Members Zone, and this Society's Symposium Website). In 2024, she co-founded the SRUK/CERU Evolution Committee with the aim to connect SRUK/CERU members that work in evolution, promote outreach in this research field, and foster collaborations between Spain and the United Kingdom while organizing discussion groups, mini symposia, and other scientific activities related to evolution (e.g., phylogenomics, systematics, palaeontology, etc.).