Profile
Alba Park de la Torriente
My CV
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Education:
I studied my elementary years in a small private school in Mexico called ‘Centro Educativo Moderno’ (Modern Education Centre). Then I went to middle school in another private institution called Thomas Alva Edison School. For high school I went to a school that is informally know as ‘TEC’, because its full name is ‘Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey’.
After high school I started studying Industrial Design in a university named ‘Iberoamerican University’, but after some time I realised I wanted to follow my childhood dream of becoming a vet. I applied to the vet school of the National University of Mexico and was accepted, so I studied and obtained my degree as a Veterinary Medic.
I then studied a Master in Science at the University of Edinburgh, where I started working with phages to treat canine urinary tract infections. I really enjoyed my time there and applied for a PhD position to continue with the same project. -
Work History:
While I was still studying my BSc I worked for some time as an assistant in a call centre. This job gave me the flexibility to keep studying hard while saving a little bit of money to afford a trip with my friends.
When I finished my 5 years of Vet training I volunteered as an assistant of the vet medical team in a zoo. I wanted to get some experience in preventing and treating diseases in zoo animals.
I then worked for a couple of years as a high school teacher, which allowed me to save some money to pay for a part of my Masters course.
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Current Job:
I am now a PhD student at the Roslin Institute. I also spend some time in activities like demonstrating during bacteriology practicals for the vet students, tutoring for high school students, and public engagement activities such as this one.
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About Me:
I am originally from Mexico City, now living in Edinburgh. I love animals, chocolate and the beach.
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Read more
I was born and raised in Mexico City, and came to Edinburgh in 2019 to do my PhD. I miss the warmth and sunshine from Mexico but I love Edinburgh’s Old Town and the nice people that live here. I really enjoy hiking, especially in the highlands. I enjoy cooking, baking and running; especially when my dogs come along. I also like singing and dancing but I am very bad at it.
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My project aims to study bacteriophages (a.k.a. phages), which are viruses that only infect and can kill bacteria. Because of this property, they could be used to treat diseases. Since there is an increasing problem with antibiotic resistance (more and more bacteria are developing an ability to survive to antibiotic treatments), phages are becoming a popular alternative. However, there is still so much we don’t know about phages. I want to understand better how phages and bacteria interact because this information can be helpful to make sure that phages can do their job of killing nasty bacteria properly, and therefore assuring that they will work if we administer them to an animal or person.
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My Typical Day:
In a typical day I wake up early and go for a run in the park. Then I take the bus to the lab and I do all the necessary things to keep my phages alive and happy so they can be ready for my experiments. I also take time to find new phages from different environmental samples.
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Phages can be found almost everywhere, but sewage is one of the best places to find loads of different phages. However, not all of those phages will be useful for my purposes. To select the phages that will be useful to kill E. coli -which is the bacterium that commonly causes urinary tract infections- I use bacterial cultures as bait.
When I get to the lab, the first thing I do is to put a little bit of bacteria in a nutritious broth where they can grow. Once they have grown enough I mix a little bit of bacterial culture, with a few drops of sewage in a jelly-like medium called agar where they can both grow. I leave them incubating at 37 degrees overnight.
On the next morning I look at the plates that I incubated. Usually I find that the agar (the jelly that provides nutrients for the bacteria to grow) had turned cloudy in all of the plate, except in a few parts. These circular areas where the agar still looks clear (because the bacteria were not able to grow there) are called plaques, and they are the results of phages killing the bacteria in that zone.
If I take those parts of the plate I am able to recover the phages that are there, and later I can use them to kill more bacteria.
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What I'd do with the prize money:
If I could win a £500 prize, I would spend it on some lab material and equipment to show students that phages can be found almost anywhere, and that anyone can find phages.
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
phage-enthusiast vet
What did you want to be after you left school?
A veterinarian
Were you ever in trouble at school?
No more that everyone else
Who is your favourite singer or band?
A mexican singer named Natalia Lafourcade
What's your favourite food?
Mexican and Korean
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
1) That I could travel in time; 2) That I could magically speak several new languages; 3) That my dogs could travel with me anywhere I went
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