Martha Cristina Abigail Guevara Becerra

DPhil student in Clinical Medicine at the University of Oxford, with a background in medicine and a focus on the structural basis of immune regulation.

I completed my Medical Degree at Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia (2014–2021), where I developed a strong interest in immunology and molecular medicine. Aside from my clinical training, I undertook international research internships in Netea's group at Radboud University Medical Center, Netherlands (2019), and in Morishita's group at the University of Miyazaki, Japan (2020), gaining foundational experience in host–pathogen interactions and immunogenetics.

In 2022–2023, I pursued the MSc in Integrated Immunology at University of Oxford. My dissertation project in Uhlig's group focused on integrating structure prediction and computational analysis into a variant-prioritisation pipeline for monogenic inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). I developed a framework that leverages state-of-the-art protein structure prediction to generate mechanistic insight into the functional consequences of missense variants and built a structured databank of predicted functional outcomes to support variant interpretation in clinical and research settings.

Following the MSc, I worked as a Research Assistant in Uhlig's group (2023–2024), where I expanded this structural modelling pipeline and contributed to multiple projects investigating genetic variants and protein complexes across diverse immune signalling pathways, such as IL6, IL10, NFKB. This work has provided a rich background in the immune interactome and its structural organisation.

Since 2024, I have been undertaking the DPhil in Clinical Medicine at Oxford, refining and applying structural analysis methods to study protein complexes involved in immune regulation. My research aims to integrate high-resolution structural modelling with ultrastructural microscopy to reconstruct immune pathways in three dimensions. Ultimately, I seek to build predictive models of how intrinsic perturbations (such as genetic mutations) and extrinsic stimuli (such as small-molecule treatments) reshape cellular architecture and immune function.

Outside the laboratory, I am an active member of the Wolfson College Boat Club as both a rower and coxswain, and I currently serve as Women's Squad Captain (2024–2025), coordinating training and racing for the women's squad. Beyond science and rowing, I also work as a visual artist, specialising in hyperrealistic portraiture using coloured pencils, charcoal, and graphite.