Santiago Barber

Visiting M.Sc.–Ph.D. Student

Santiago (Santi) is a visiting PhD student in Computational Cancer Metabolism from Dr. Guadalupe Sabio’s lab at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) and an MSc student in Computational Biology at Weill Cornell Medicine. Originally from Maryland and raised in Spain, Santi has a background in pharmacy and drug discovery and earned his PharmD from the Complutense University of Madrid. His research lies at the intersection of computational biology, bioinformatics, data science, and metabolism, with a particular interest in the discovery and functional characterization of microproteins encoded by small open reading frames (smORFs). His current work focuses on integrating transcriptomic and proteomic datasets with machine learning and AI-based prediction and annotation methods to identify adipose tissue–secreted microproteins and investigate their potential roles in metabolic regulation and inter-organ communication. Santi also studies the cardiometabolic effects of cold exposure in human cohorts, using multi-omics approaches to characterize changes in circulating proteins, metabolites, and lipids. More broadly, his research aims to develop computational strategies that connect in silico microprotein discovery with experimental and clinical data, facilitating the identification and functional validation of previously uncharacterized regulators of human metabolism.