Leticia Valencia

I graduated in Industrial Engineering in 2011 at the Carlos III University of Madrid after completing my Final Degree Project at CIRIAF (Centro Interuniversitario di Ricerca sull’Inquinamento da Agenti Fisici), in Perugia (Italy). After returning, I decided to enroll in a master's degree in Industrial Mathematics at the Carlos III University of Madrid to improve my skills with programming and modeling problems. After completing my studies in 2013, I met Professor Jorcano who proposed me to do my doctoral thesis in his new research group on the healing of skin wounds from a physical and mechanical point of view. During my predoctoral years I learned about cell and molecular biology, how to work with cell cultures to perform my experiments, immunofluorescence to characterize them, and how to work with biomaterials related to tissue engineering, among others. I did stays at the Institut Curie, in Paris, with Professor Silberzan, where I learned to work in a clean room, microfabrication processes with photolithography, and performed analysis of cell competition experiments for the characterization of invasion processes in cancer. I finished my doctoral thesis “Characterizing the mechanical response of an epidermal cell monolayers during wound healing” in 2017, obtaining the maximum grade of outstanding and the Cum Laude mention.

During my post-doctorate, I have been hired for a research project for the generation of hair follicles in epidermal matrices in vitro. In it I perform tasks characterization of spheroids and microgels with encapsulated cells, by confocal microscopy . I study cell viability, morphology and proliferation.

I have also worked in skin-on-a-chip applications for the development of a miniaturized 3D skin equivalent for drug and cosmetic testing purposes.