Roberto Maya-Martinez PhD

From an early age, Roberto was fascinated by living creatures and the universe and so a career in science was always a likely path. Roberto started his scientific journey at the UAM-I University in Mexico where he studied Experimental Biology, where his fascination in protein biochemistry grew leading to a Masters and then a PhD which focussed on exploring proteins in solution by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) at the Morelos Autonomous University in Mexico. It was here that Roberto discovered his love for studying protein structure in solution and during his first post-doctoral research at Institute de Biologie Structurale in Grenoble-France he had the opportunity to combine NMR and SAXS to decipher what was behind the antibiotic resistance in penicillin binding proteins. A second post-doc at the Astbury Centre for Structural Biology at the University of Leeds, UK involved the application of biophysical strategies to investigate protein misfolding and aggregation that occur in most of degenerative diseases. Roberto’s love of science continues to be understanding and investigating steady/ transient/excited states of proteins for potential therapeutic purposes.

In his free time Roberto really enjoys reading, hiking and particularly running, nothing professional just something between 15 to 23Km. Normally, Roberto attempts a couple of half a marathon races during the year, although he doesn’t discard the possibility of running at least one full marathon at some point!