Camila Castillo -Vilcahuaman

I am currently a Doctoral Researcher at the VEO Group in Friedrich Schiller Universität Jena - Germany. My main research interests are in microbial ecology and evolution, and the bioinformatics side of these topics. I feel that I am at a stage in my academic life in which I am looking for more theoretical questions regarding microbial ecology and evolution (You could say that I’m in my Theoretical Era).

Prior to this, I was enrolled in a BSc. in Biology and a MSc. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in Lima - Peru. I did my Masters Thesis in the comparative genomics of Bartonella bacilliformis, a pathogen restricted to the Andean region.

As any latinamerican researcher, I had numerous paralel jobs during my time in Peru, such as software developer and SEO technician in the IT industry, a side-job you can check on LinkedIn, if you are interested in that side of me. I also hold a technical degree in Computation and Informatics and have taught courses in technology for technical institutes.

I do not believe in specialization and I do everything in my power to not fall into it. Thus, you will find a directory from which you can also explore my literary work, my art, sci-comm events and coding side projects. I do consider that exploring multiple fields contributes to creativity in general and allows me to think with other scopes in mind. Many of my ideas for my science come from other sources.

When not working on my paid-job, you will find me reading good or bad literature, listening to progressive metal albums, riding my bike, watching body-mod content or just discussing stuff over Reddit (which is basically an unpaid job with the length of my comments…)

I am always open to questions and lengthy discussions over e-mail! I might be the only person that regularly checks her e-mail. Collaborations might be a tricky one, but I’m always interested in never-explored microbial ecosystems.

about reymonera

In my heart I’m still a nerdy kid, so when I had to start an academic Internet identity, I knew I wanted one of those cool hacker names even when I never hacked anything in my life. Said hacker name had to have some relation with my field of expertise. I also got into drag and was watching Dragula at the time, so I decided that my cool hacker name needed to be effortlessly translated into a drag king name too. Thus, reymonera was born. I don’t know how much time this shtick will have, but writing reymonera.github on scientific papers never gets old!