Mariana obtained her B.Sc. degree in Genomic Sciences from UNAM (2009), her M.Sc. degree in Biomedical Engineering and Physics from CINVESTAV Monterrey (2011) under the supervision of Dr. Moisés Santillán, and her Ph.D. degree in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics from Duke University (2016) under the supervision of Dr. Nicolas Buchler. Her graduate research explored how organisms can use epigenetics and gene expression stochasticity to deal with fluctuating environments, focusing on the properties and evolutionary emergence of bistable switches. Following her Ph.D. studies, during her postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Dr. Hana El-Samad at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), she studied the principles and limitations of cellular feedback control. At LIIGH, she aims to understand how the dynamic properties of gene regulatory circuits emerge, proliferate and persist through natural selection. Her work combines evolutionary theory, population genetics, and biophysical models of gene regulatory circuits. Her expertise comprises mathematical modeling of gene regulatory circuits and nonlinear dynamics.