CV
Download CV (PDF, last updated August 2025)
The downloadable PDF is an earlier version. This page includes more recent research and community activities.
Education
- PhD, Integrative Biosciences – Bioinformatics, University of Massachusetts Boston, 2023–present. Funded by WWF (Fonseca Leadership, 2025–2026).
- M.Sc. Biology, Universidad Industrial de Santander, Colombia, 2020. Thesis: ancestral areas of the major clades of Testudines.
- B.A. Biology, Universidad Industrial de Santander, Colombia, 2016
Research experience
Doctoral researcher, University of Massachusetts Boston, 2023–present. Phylogenetic comparative biology, reproducible scientific software, AI-assisted study design, ancestral state reconstruction, and extinction-risk research; working with Liam J. Revell.
Research assistant, Universidad de la Santísima Concepción, Chile, 2021–2023. Web platform for phylogenetic comparative biology (Fondecyt, Dr. Liam Revell).
Research assistant, Universidad del Rosario, Colombia, 2021. Miocene turtles and fossil snakes of the Tatacoa Desert (Dr. Edwin Cadena).
Teaching and mentoring
Biology laboratory teaching, University of Massachusetts Boston, 2026
Lecturer, Statistics for Biologists and Systematics, Universidad Industrial de Santander, 2018–2021
High school biology teacher, Colegio de la Presentación, 2019
Co-tutor and tutor of two undergraduate theses, 2018–2019
Training
Participant, Paul English Applied AI Institute, 2026; completed the ZINC team hackathon project
EMBO workshop, Molecular Evolution Biology (100 h), Greece, 2025
AI+Science Summer School, Chicago, 2024 (fee waiver and travel stipend)
Applied Phylogenetics, UC Davis, 2019; Phylogeny DevelopeR, Nantucket, 2019; RevBayes, Buenos Aires, 2018; Intensive short course on phylogenetic comparative methods in R, San Juan, 2016
The posters page lists every poster; the PDF CV has the full list of events and courses.
Workshops and organizing
Co-organizer, 3rd AI Symposium, Boston, 2026
Organizing committee, First Latin American Congress of Evolution (CLEVOL), 2021
Instructor, GBIF and cleaning biodiversity databases in R, 2019
Teaching assistant, Introduction to phylogenetic methods in R, Universidad del Valle, 2017
Organizing committee, Owen, Darwin and Wallace Day, Universidad Industrial de Santander, 2017
Volunteering and collections
- Herpetology collection volunteer, Natural History Museum, Universidad Industrial de Santander, 2008–2016: specimen preparation, cataloging, and taxonomic identification
- Online volunteer, Smithsonian Transcription Center, pollen collection, 2017: label transcription and review
- Yaré II project volunteer, PROAVES / Natural History Museum, London, 2010: herpetological fieldwork and specimen preparation in the Serranía de los Yariguíes, Colombia
Awards
- 1st place poster, VI Colombian Symposium of Evolutionary Biology, 2017
- 2nd place poster, National Symposium of Evolution, Ecology and Environment, 2016
- 1st place presentation, X Latin American Congress of Herpetology, 2015
Peer-reviewed publications
- Vallejos-Garrido P., Pino K., Espinoza-Aravena N., Pari A., Inostroza-Michael O., Toledo-Muñoz M., Castillo-Ravanal B., Romero-Alarcon V., Hernández C.E., Palma R.E., Rodríguez-Serrano E. (2023). The importance of the Andes in the evolutionary radiation of Sigmodontinae (Rodentia, Cricetidae), the most diverse group of mammals in the Neotropics. Scientific Reports 13, 2207. doi:10.1038/s41598-023-28497-0
- Diaz Acevedo C.J., Romero-Alarcon L.V., Miranda-Esquivel D.R. (2020). Neotropical páramos as biogeographic units. Revista de Biología Tropical 68(2), 503–516. doi:10.15517/rbt.v68i2.39347
Preprints
Revell L.J., Alencar L.R.V., Alfaro M.E., Dain J., Hill N.J., Jones M., Martinet K.M., Romero-Alarcon V., Harmon L.J. (2026). Unlocking a flexible set of phylogenetic models for discrete and continuous trait evolution using discretized stochastic diffusion. bioRxiv. doi:10.64898/2026.04.20.719455. Preprint; not peer reviewed. Authors 2–8 contributed equally.
Talks
- Guane: a flexible web platform for learning, teaching, and analysis in phylogenetic comparative biology, phase I. LXV Annual Meeting of the Sociedad de Biología de Chile, Pucón, 2022 (with Liam Revell)
- Patrón de diversificación y estatus de conservación de tortugas neotropicales. I Latin American Congress of Biogeography, Quito, 2017
Other publications and reports
- Romero-Alarcon L.V., Miranda-Esquivel D.R. (2016). biogeoclean, software.
- Aguilar J., Romero V., Arias J., Bautista Y., Donegan T., Huertas B., Luna J.C., Pinto J., Villanueva D. (2013). Yaré II Project: Serranía de los Yariguíes Assessment and Research of Endangered Species. Final report, Conservation Leadership Programme follow-up award.
- Desarrollos computacionales. Boletín Colombiano de Biología Evolutiva COLEVOL, vols. 3–7 (2015–2019), ISSN 2500-6762.
Skills
R, Bash, Shiny, Python; statistical and machine learning models (TensorFlow, PyTorch); phylogenetic analysis and comparative methods; data visualization.