Biography
Dr Caterina Mata graduated in Biology in 2006 at the University of Valencia (UV). During the last year of her degree (2006), she became an active member of the UPV-UV-iGEM and participated in the International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition organized by The Massachusets Institute of Technology (MIT; Boston 2006). Afterwards she moved to Barcelona to study a Master’s Degree in Microbiology and Genetics at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB).
She has worked in different research laboratories since 2004, all of them related to Molecular Biology and/or Clinical Microbiology, area where she completed her Doctoral Thesis at Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, in Barcelona in 2011. The research work aimed to study the molecular epidemiology of plasmid AmpC beta-lactamases in Enterobacteriaceae and their horizontal diffusion (Extraordinary Doctorate Award).
For almost a decade, she developed her work as a Specialist in Library Preparation for Next Generation Sequencing, at the National Center for Genomic Analysis (CNAG). During this time, she got specialized in the field of sequencing using different sequencing platforms with both Illumina and Oxford Nanopore technology (ONT). She has focused her career on next-generation sequencing technologies and the applications they can bring to basic and clinical research.
As the Head of the Single Cell Unit, she is in charge of the scientific and technical support of all single cell research projects carried out in the unit, among other responsibilities related to the management of the platform. She is involved as a team member of several single cell projects as well as Principal Investigator of the multi-coordinated project named “Brain and blood co-expression networks using DDR1 as a seed gene in bipolar disorder. Identification of new biomarkers” where single nuclei and spatial transcriptomics technologies are involved.