I started studying broad-nosed weevils as part of my undergrad research project which focused on identifying entimine genera in Colombia. I chose the group because I was quickly amazed by their beauty and their diversity, even though finding and getting access to information about Neotropical entimine fauna was quite challenging at the time. Thanks to the support of Bob Anderson I was able to finish my project and then became the first Master's student at the Franz Lab (with Nico Franz), which at the time was located at the University of Puerto Rico in Mayagüez. There I worked on morphology-based phylogenetics of two different Caribbean lineages of entimines: Apodrosus (Polydrusini) and Lachnopus (Geonemini).

For my doctoral studies I took a circumstantial detour studying water scavenger beetles, but kept my weevil studies going on the side.

As a Postdoctoral Researcher at Purdue University (2020–2022), I developed the Coleoptera Anatomy Ontology, a project that aims to standardize the terminology for beetle morphology, to help unlocking morphological information stored in beetle descriptions in the literature. Hopefully, one of these days we will get to standardize weevil morphological terminology.

I also co-coordinate the Grupo Coleoptera de Colombia, where we are compiling the lists of beetle species recorded from Colombia and sharing them via GBIF through SiB Colombia.

Since September 2023 I am the curator of the Invertebrate Zoology Collection of the Museum of Texas Tech University.

For more information about me and my research, visit my personal website.

Contact: entiminae@gmail.com