Esmeralda was born in Inirida, Colombia. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Biology from the Pontifical Xavierian University in Colombia. Then, Esmeralda moved to Spain where she got a M.S. in Microbiology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 2008. She then completed her PhD at the University of Lleida in Spain in 2014. Her doctoral research focused on identifying protein and miRNA profiles of value for the diagnosis and/or prediction of thyroid cancer prognosis. For the last six years, her investigation focused on characterizing cardiovascular complications as a subclinical atherosclerotic disease by imaging techniques and its characterization and discovering potential new biomarkers of this condition in prediabetes 1 and type 2 diabetes in Barcelona. Dr Castelblanco joined Dr Remedi’s lab in December 2020. She is currently studying secondary consequences of diabetes in pancreatic an extra-pancreatic tissues in mouse models of diabetes.