I am a Professor ("Catedrático") at the Department of Biochemistry, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM). Before that, and for nine years, I was a researcher at the Spanish National Cancer Center (CNIO). My research (at UAM and CNIO) has been in bioinformatics, computational biology, and statistical computing (applied to bioinformatics problems). My background is a mix of biology (BSc. in Biology ---from UAM---, PhD Zoology ---University of Wisconsin-Madison) and statistics (MSc. Biometry, MSc. Statistics, both from UW-Madison). For my PhD I used to chase lizards (behavioral ecology) and I also worked on the comparative method in evolutionary biology. After finishing my PhD and before coming to the CNIO I worked as statistician in a company that developed artifical intelligence software and in a marketing research company, and I have also done some private statistical consulting.

A brief CV in English (education, publications, etc). My ResearcherID, ORCID ID and Google Scholar links.

Main research interests

During the last 20+ years I've worked mainly in the use of statistics and statistical computing in bioinformatics problems. For instance, I've worked on classification problems (e.g., the random forest and GeneSrF papers), as well as gene differential expression (e.g., Pomelo paper, and several collaborative papers), on the usage of parallel computing for web-based stats applications for bioinformatics problems (the papers about Asterias, SignS, etc), and on the identification of DNA copy number alterations from aCGH data (e.g., the HMM and the recurrent regions papers).

During the last ten years or so, I've started working on trying to understand the sequence of driver genetic events and predict tumor evolution using methods that take ideas from phylogenetic methods (sort of a return to some things I did in the past, during my PhD) and probabilistic graphical models. This has led me to deal, too, with simulating clonal evolution processes. This area is actually my main major focus: cancer progression models and evolutionary models of cancer (not unlike applying ecology and evolutionary biology to the study of cancer).

My main current research interest include:

• Evolutionary biology as well as its applications to cancer.
• Classification problems with "omics" data.
• Causal inference.
• Simulation-based inference.
• General statistical analysis for interesting research questions.

Information for prospective students

If you think you could be interested in working with me (masters project, PhD, postdoc, short stay, etc), send me an email letting me know what problems interest you, how they match/overlap my main research areas, and why you think our working together could be interesting for you (and for me). Please provide some information about your background in biology and your computing and statistical skills (or lack thereof, but how you'd deal with it), as well as how you plan to support yourself (funding, etc).

Contact

[r.diaz (the at symbol) uam.es]

How to get to the lab.

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