Governing Body Fellow
Dr Guillermo Serrano Nájera is interested in how cells coordinate their behaviours to generate tissues and organs during animal embryonic development. He completed his PhD at the University of Dundee, where he combined computational analysis, microscopy, and developmental biology to study early chick embryos. He described how to manipulate chick embryos to reproduce tissue movement typical of other species (frogs, fish, and chameleons). These results show the plasticity of embryonic development and illuminate how different animal morphologies can evolve. He continues exploring embryonic development and evolution using novel stem cells based in vitro systems that mimic essential aspects of early development such as germ-layer differentiation and morphogenesis.
Guillermo is also curious about artificial intelligence. He frequently develops tools for image analysis and has experience in the pharmaceutical industry, where he developed AI for the early detection of emergent drug targets in the scientific literature. Likewise, he is very passionate about evolutionary biology and domestication, which led him to conduct independent research proposing that self-domestication could explain many of the naked mole rat’s strange traits.
In his free time, Guillermo likes to make attempts at meaningless research bits, writing and computational art.
