MariaAVC.github.io/Research.html at main · MariaAVC/MariaAVC.github.io · GitHub

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<title>Maria Valdez Cabrera</title>


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  <a href="index.html">About</a>
  <a class="active" href="Research.html">Research</a>
  <a href="Teaching.html">Teaching</a>
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        <h1>Maria Valdez Cabrera (she/her) </h1>
        <h4>Postdoctoral Fellow, </h4>
        <h4>Department of Biostatistics, University of Washington</h4>
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        <h2> Research Motivation </h2>

        <p> I am forever fascinated by the challenge of representing natural processes through mathematical frameworks that capture their inherent complexity. Developing appropriate statistical tools for these representations through the lens of Object Oriented Data Analysis is a core motivation that drives my work.</p>

        <p> I am eager to contribute to projects where building and analyzing complex mathematical objects can enhance our understanding of pressing biological questions, especially in ecology, disease tracking and disease prevention. My goal is to bridge meaningful biological insight with methodological innovation, enabling nuanced and data-driven perspectives on how living systems function and evolve. </p>

        <h2> Current Research </h2>

        <p> My current postdoctoral position with <a href="https://statdivlab.github.io/team/amy-willis.html"> Dr. Amy Willis </a> aims to build new statistical tools for the analysis of Phylogenetic Trees. In the pursuit of this:  </p>

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            <li> We introduced a continuous metric between phylogenetic trees with overlapping but non-identical leaves, reflecting the reality of evolutionary histories for transferred genes shared by some but not all bacteria and archea and providing an intuitive comparison method for these trees. </li>
            <b> Working on: </b>
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            <li> The development of quick and efficient algorithms to compute the distance we introduced, along with an R package for its implementation. This involves improving the computational representation of this trees for memory efficiency. </li>
            <li> Analyzing the properties of the Sample Fréchet Mean for trees in our metric space. </li>
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            <li> We are currently collaborating with <a href="https://armeentaeb.github.io/index/"> Dr. Armeen Taeb </a> for the devolopment of a new tool for tree reconstruction, which employs a Poset structure to guarantee stability and a low False Discovery Rate. </li>
            <b> Working on: </b>
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                <li>Finalizing the manuscript. </li>
                <li>Publishing an R package.</li>
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        <h2>Publications</h2>

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            <h3>Published articles</h3>
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                    <li><b>Valdez Cabrera, M. A.</b>, & Willis, A. D. (2025). <i>Distances Between Extension Spaces of Phylogenetic Trees</i>. IEEE Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, 22(2), 614–627. https://doi.org/10.1109/TCBBIO.2025.3526422 </li>
                    <li> Mirembe, B. G., <b>Valdez Cabrera, M.</b>, van der Straten, A., Nakalega, R., Cobbing, M., Mgodi, N. M., Palanee-Phillips, T., Mayo, A. J., Dadabhai, S., Mansoor, L. E., Siva, S., Nair, G., Chinula, L., Akello, C. A., Nakabiito, C., Soto-Torres, L. E., Baeten, J. M., & Brown, E. R. (2022). <i>Correlates of Dapivirine Vaginal Ring Acceptance among Women Participating in an Open Label Extension Trial</i>. AIDS and Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-022-03841-z </li>
                    <li> Urquídez, O., & <b>Valdez, M.</b> (2019). <i>Diseño de grafos pesados con n-cíclos persistentes</i>. Morfismos, Vol. 23 No.1</li>
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            <h3>Pre-printed articles </h3>
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                    <li> <b>Valdez Cabrera, M. A.</b>, Willis, A. D., &  Taeb, A. (2025). <i>Consensus Tree Estimation with False Discovery Rate Control via Partially Ordered Sets.</i> https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2511.23433 </li>
                    <li> <b>Valdez Cabrera, M. A.</b>, & Willis, A. D. (2025). <i>Geometry of the space of phylogenetic trees with non-identical leaves.</i> https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2508.06747</li>
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