I'm a 4th year PhD student now finishing my studies at the University of Stirling. I'm originally from Spain and did a degree on Biology. I always studied Human Biology, but in my last year of my studies in Spain they told us to do a project on environmental science and I quite enjoyed it. After I finished my degree, I decided to come to Scotland to do an Internship at the University of Stirling under the supervision of Dr. Giuseppe Paladini. After a few months working in the Parasitology lab I fell in love more and more with this research and everything related to the aquaculture industry. I think what I enjoyed the most was being out there in the farm sites and sampling in the outdoors.
This is when I relaised I wanted to contribute to this small but fascinating industry and decided to pursue a PhD degree in order to keep learning about this field. Thanks to the ParaFishControl project I'm lucky to be working on one of the biggest challenges in Salmon Aquaculture worldwide which is the infectious Neoparamoeba perurans, which is a parasite that kills tonnes of Salmon and other fish species across the globe. My project is focused in looking into the transcriptome of this parasite in order to characterise vaccine targets to help develop a vaccine against it.
After my degree I would like to keep working in Fish Health and assisting farm sites with my knowledge on parasitic infections.
President of Aquaculture Students Association (ASA)
University of Stirling
https://www.facebook.com/asa.stirling/
I was in charge of this association which consisted in assisting my student community here at the University of Stirling. This association planned events like Halloween and Christmas parties and more importantly, the Careers Day in which we connected the students with the research and industry community to build up a network and for them to develop a career path.
Treasurer of Aquaculture Students Association (ASA)
I helped in the association through event planning and monetary responsabilites.
Parasitology, Fish Health, Microbiology, Diagnostics, Fish husbandry
Article
Fernandez‐Senac C, Fridman S, Sokolowska J, Monaghan SJ, Garzon T, Betancor M, Paladini G, Adams A & Bron JE (2020) A comparison of the use of different swab materials for optimal diagnosis of amoebic gill disease (AGD) in Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar L.). Journal of Fish Diseases, 43 (11), pp. 1463-1472. https://doi.org/10.1111/jfd.13243
Article
Fernandez C, Mascolo D, Monaghan SJ, Baily JL, Chalmers L, Paladini G, Adams A, Bron JE & Fridman S (2019) Methacarn preserves mucus integrity and improves visualization of amoebae in gills of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar L.). Journal of Fish Diseases, 42 (6), pp. 883-894. https://doi.org/10.1111/jfd.12988
During my PhD and my internship at the University of Stirling I assisted in numerous practicals and taught about parasitology and fish dissections.