JAVIER
RODRÍGUEZ LÓPEZ

I started in the field of Microbiology with a contract as Research Support Staff, within the framework of the national youth guarantee system and the operational youth employment programme of the University of Granada, Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Dentistry (2017). Subsequently, I obtained a Predoctoral contract from the Plan Propio of the University of Jaén (2017), Dept. of Health Sciences, Area of Microbiology, research group AGR-230. During my PhD in Food Microbiology I worked on the influence of processing methods on antimicrobial resistance in plant foods. In my fourth year as a PhD student (2021) I obtained a grant (Action 5b of the Plan of the University of Jaén) to carry out an international stay at the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Facoltà di Agraria, in Naples (Italy), for 3 months. This fruitful stay led to the publication of an article and my first contact in the field of bioinformatics and metagenomic analysis. In addition, this stay led me to obtain the title of Doctor with international mention. On 13 May 2022 I defended my doctoral thesis, entitled "Influencia de los métodos de procesamiento sobre la biodiversidad bacteriana y la resistencia antimicrobiana en alimentos vegetales" (Influence of processing methods on bacterial biodiversity and antimicrobial resistance in plant foods), which was awarded "cum laude" by the University of Jaén. After finishing my predoctoral stage, I obtained a postdoctoral contract (Action 6. Grants for the co-funding of postdoctoral employment contracts) co-funded by the University of Jaén and my research group (AGR-230), in May 2022. Subsequently, I obtained a Margarita Salas postdoctoral contract, which started in January 2023 and runs until December 2024 (2 years). During the first year, I had the opportunity to work with the research group "Molecular Genetics" at the University of Groningen, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Groningen (The Netherlands), carrying out tasks related to transcriptomics and metagenomics, which has allowed me to broaden my knowledge in bioinformatics. I am currently in the second year of the contract, as a Research Staff in the research group AGR-230 of the University of Jaén, putting into practice the knowledge I have acquired. My scientific contribution includes 6 articles, 3 of them as first author, based on the results obtained during my PhD. In addition, the experience acquired in the field of bioinformatics has allowed me to collaborate in other projects, giving rise to another 3 articles. Among other skills, it is worth highlighting my ability to perform 16S rDNA amplicon analysis, metagenomics and metatranscriptomics of samples obtained by high-throughput sequencing techniques.