Meet Nestor Sampedro.

Hello everyone!

I hope you enjoy this entry and hopefully it will help you get to know me a bit. My name is Nestor Sampedro, I am doing my PhD studies at the Andersen Lab for Biomolecular Designat Aarhus University in Denmark.

To start, I would like to dedicate a few lines to the place I come from, since it is very special for me, it might help you to get to know me a little better. I come from a small town in the North of Spain, Oviedo, located in the province of Asturias.

Its abrupt Picos de Europa(“Peaks of Europe”) mountain range shelters some of the most beautiful and sharp landscapes I have ever witnessed.

Waters are rough and cold (maybe not as much as in Denmark) over there, only the braves swim during the winter, but surfers take advantage all year long of heavy, rearing waves.

If you are lucky with the weather, you have hundreds of beaches close at hand, mountains, forests and rivers. Asturias is a summary of nature’s bounty.

Back home I used to spend most of my spare time outdoors, either surfing, climbing mountains or snowboarding during the winter, but most importantly I did those things with my family, my friends and my little dog.

Here you can see a picture of me with my dog and on the right a picture of when me and my mom had the same hair.

So, now a brief summary of how I ended up moving to Denmark:

I started the B.Sc. in Biology at the University of my home town mainly because of my love for the nature that surrounded me. Thanks to an outstanding Biochemistry professor, I quickly found out that enigmas that could be solved in a lab, with demanding work and ideas was a thing for me, I just did not know at the time what was more interesting.

I decided to try out different stuff and I jumped into a few different fields during my Bachelor’s ranging from cell biology, to metabolism. During the development of my Master’s thesis I finally came in touch with nanotechnology. I spent about a year at the Biological Research Center in Madrid, working in the development of silicon microparticles aimed to act as an in vivogene expression detection method. I had the chance to work with an amazing team and an awesome supervisor who transmitted to me her passion for science, it was such a nice experience that I wanted to pursue a career in bionanotechnology. When I found this ITN I couldn’t believe there was such a nice opportunity, so I sent out the application and here I am.

My sense towards the group I am part of is amazing, I have learnt a lot so far from my supervisor and colleagues and I highly recommend checking out our group websitein which you can learn about our latest creative and appealing work.

Doing a PhD is a challenging step in a professional career, being part of a network in which we can feel connected with other students in similar situations is something to be happy about, most of us (if not all) have fled our countries and homes to pursue these challenges. The experience within the ITN has been really exciting so far, there are a lot of incredibly ambitious projects with really nice people working on them who I had the chance to meet and I am excited to see again, the future is promising, so stay tuned!