Awesome way of starting 2021 while celebrating that Miles was awarded a James S. McDonnell Foundation’s 2020 Postdoctoral Fellowship Award to study Dynamic and Multi-scale systems. The JSMF Fellowship is $200,000 USD to be expended in no less than 2 and no more than 3 years and we have no doubt Miles will make an incredible contribution to science with these funds. Miles, you made us all proud! Now Miles can go wherever he wants to pursue postdoctoral research and continue his great work linking theoretical ecology and bacterial biophysics.

We are super pleased to learn today that Simon’s latest manuscript,  Do microenvironmental changes disrupt multicellular organisation with ageing, enacting and favouring the cancer cell phenotype? , was recently accepted for publication in BioEssays!

Super happy to learn today that we got 3 years of funding to study ecology on-chip together with our colleagues at the Núcleo Milenio Active Matter Physics. In the last three years of collaborations with researchers at the center, we have increased the number of PIs and research lines from 3 to 6 while expanding the number of universities involved from 1 to 3. Furthermore, we have enriched the territorial extent of our research operations to now incorporate Aysén in Chilean Patagonia. It has been a great ride mixing physics and biology while studying the boundary between soft  and biological matter. Thanks to all colleagues who have been part of the adventure.

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We congratulate Simon (Castillo) on a great Ph.D. defense and wish him the best on his new adventure in England. Simon, did amazing work linking spatial ecology and cancer research mixing experiments and theoretical work. Simon has been offered a postdoc position at the Yuan lab at the Institute of Cancer Research in the UK to perform postdoctoral work at the interface of ecology and cancer. We wish Simon the best in his new transatlantic adventure!.

We are delighted to learn that Susana is already in the USA to start her Ph.D. at University of Oregon in Eugene. We wish Susana the best in her new adventure and we are very lucky to have had her help as our Research Assistant for the past year.

Congratulations to Alfredo (L’Homme) for being accepted to CRI’s master program
in Paris, France. Alfredo will be getting a dual master degree, working between CRI in Paris and our beloved OpenFIESTA in Shenzhen!

Congratulations Miles for getting our new paper  Expansion, Exploitation and Extinction: Niche Construction in Ephemeral Landscapes published in Scientific Reports. After, working hard, and many 300 DPI frustrations, it is finally out.

Due to rampant misogyny and institutionalized machismo at Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (PUC) we are leaving for a healthier place. Thanks to the very few people who were an exception to the rule.

#MeToo moves south
Science 21 Feb 2020:
Vol. 367, Issue 6480, pp. 842-845
DOI: 10.1126/science.367.6480.842

We are so so happy that Simon Navia, our latest physics student at UC, is moving closer to biological physics as he just got accepted at U.Chile’s physics graduate school! There we will keep researching with Simon in the context of our Millennium Nucleus on Active Matter Physics.
Congrats Simon!

We had an awesome learning experience in Aysen! We visited U. Aysen and together, with students from Liceo Josefina Aguirre Montenegro in Coyhaique and from Liceo Rural Cerro Castillo in Cerro Castillo, constructed a HomeScope for each of the schools’ DIY biology groups. We learned so much about the the role Open Science Hardware can play in connecting rural and urban youths with Nature and ecosystems. Thank you all for teaching us so much and making us have so much fun! Thanks to Fondecyt 1191893 for making this possible.