Mayra Paola Oquist Phillips was born in Managua, Nicaragua in 1995. She is a Biologist specialized in Biotechnology graduated from Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) in 2017.
During her undergraduate studies, she studied the heterologous production and biochemical characterization of glycosidase enzymes from lactic-acid bacteria Lactobacillus plantarum WCFS1 using molecular genetics tools and production in E. coli bacteria under the supervision of Prof. Rosario Muñoz Moreno and Blanca de las Rivas Gonzalez del Rey, in the Bacterial Biotechnology Group of the Institute of Food Science and Technology and Nutrition (ICTAN-CSIC).
She earned her M.Sc. in Industrial and Environmental Biotechnology from UCM in 2019. During the last year, she worked at the Biological Research Centre-Margarita Salas (CIBMargarita Salas-CSIC) under the supervision of Prof. Francisco Javier Cañada Vicinay, developing a method for rapid screening and chemical mapping of fluorinated carbohydrates in interaction with proteins using 19F-Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) transverse relaxation techniques.
She subsequently worked in Prof. Javier Cañada’s group, where she analyzed Heparan Sulfate Proteoglycans and its derivatives utilizing NMR, HPLC, and molecular biology techniques including ELISA.
In 2021, she joined the Medicinal Chemistry Group at UCM to pursue her PhD with an FPI fellowship under the supervision of Prof. Ángeles Canales Mayordomo. She is working on a research project aimed at expressing and unraveling the structure of N-glycans of intact mammalian glycoproteins by NMR using the paramagnetic approach.