1. Tell me in five words who is Cecilia Dominguez Conde
   Curious immunologist passionate about genomics.
    
2. What made you join CeMM?
   Back in 2012, I was finishing my master’s degree at the Division of infection and immunity of University College London (UCL) and I was looking for PhD programs across Europe. CeMM offered an international and multidisciplinary environment that seemed the right choice for me. When I visited for the interview, both the cutting-edge research (with the recent publication of IL10R deficiency at that time) and the brilliant members of the Boztug lab convinced me to take the decision.
    
3. What is it about science that interests you the most?
   I come from a family of pharmacists and what attracted me to the scientific method was a strong motivation to understand the molecular underpinnings of human disease. Being close to a community pharmacy made me aware of the needs for efficient therapeutics that can only be obtained through scientific evidence. During my career I have broadened my interest also to fundamental biological phenomena and it is perhaps the evolution of immune defense systems that fascinates me the most.
    
4. What is the best career advice you ever received, or you can give to the CeMM community?
   “Build a T-shaped knowledge”, i.e. wide across disciplines and deep on a specific area. This piece of advice was shared by Giulio some years ago during a career day and it sticked with me. I strongly believe that bridging fields of research strengthens the impact of our contributions.
    
5. Tell us what happened to you after you left CeMM?
   After a great time at CeMM, I had the fortune to join the Teichmann lab at the Wellcome Sanger Institute for a postdoc. I stayed for 3 and a half fantastic years in which I contributed to dissecting transcriptomic features of immune cells during development and tissue adaptation. Almost 2 years ago now, I started my lab at the Genomics Centre of the Human Technopole in Milan. Our research is focused on early-life immunity and how it can be influenced by genetic variation.
    

6. What book do you have on your night table at the moment
   “El infinito en un junco” or, in its English edition, “Papyrus: the invention of books in the ancient world”, by Spanish philologist and writer Irene Vallejo.

7. What is the last song you heard?
   A beautiful merengue from Xoel López called Mágica y Eterna.                      

8. Any message you would like to give to CeMMies or a former colleague?
   Come and visit us at the Human Technopole!!! 

Cecilia Domínguez Conde is a Group Leader at the Population & Medical Genomics programme of the Genomics Centre. After training as a pharmacist in the University of Seville, Cecilia went on to do a PhD in Immunology at the group of Kaan Boztug at CeMM, where her work focused on dissecting the genetic cause of molecularly undiagnosed primary immunodeficiencies using exome sequencing. In 2019 Cecilia joined the Teichmann lab at the Wellcome Sanger Institute where her focus has been to dissect the diversity of human immune cell types across lymphoid and non-lymphoid tissues as part of the Human Cell Atlas initiative. Her research group at HT uses cutting-edge genomic technologies to study developmental immunology.