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Ismael’s scientific journey begins in Valencia (Spain) where he earned his B.Sc – M.Sc in Biotechnology from the Polytechnic University of Valencia and his M.Sc of Nanoscience and Molecular Nanotechnology from the University of Valencia. During these formative years, he dabbled in all sorts of research topics that in one way, or another represented an intersection between biology, engineering and nanotechnology such as tissue engineering and biomaterials design, synthetic biology, bioinspired reticular nanomaterials, all of them alongside the topic that would become his main fascination up to the present day: nucleic acid nanotechnology.

After his stint characterizing the dynamic behavior of a DNA seesaw gate tethered to a DNA origami at Dr. Juan Elezgaray’s lab at University of Bordeaux during an Erasmus Internship and his M.Sc in Nanoscience, Ismael decided to pursue a PhD in Bioengineering under the supervision of Dr. Thomas E. Ouldridge and Prof. Guy-Bart V. Stan at Imperial College London in which he designed duplex-based reaction network systems capable of out-of-equilibrium operation akin to those of natural transduction networks. This doctoral experience was immediately followed by his time as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the TAPDANCE group at Hamilton Institute Maynooth University in Ireland under the supervision of Prof Damien Woods in which he studied DNA-based self-assembled systems capable of self-replication through the exploitation of hydrodynamic turbulences.

Always willing to learn new abilities, jump into new fields and expand his horizons, Ismael is now joining the Single Molecule Characterization team of the Quantum DNA Research Group at Boise State University under the supervision of Dr. Keitel Cervantes-Salguero with the aim of putting his previous experience in DNA nanotechnology to design and characterize DNA-dye hybrid systems with potential technological applications such as substrates for Quantum Information Technologies (QIT) or light-harvesting systems.