I am currently a graduate student working at the Physics Faculty, University of Havana. As a member of the Group of Complex Systems I contribute to various research projects ranging from bacterial microflows to granular matter; my work here is very experiment oriented, most of the times involving some sort of programming (experiment automation, image processing...).
I also have great interest in the field of wireless sensor networks both from the research and applications points of view. Several of the works I have done in the last years are devoted to this area.
When not studying or doing research, I enjoy watching movies or taking photographs, you can find some of them at photo.net or in the image gallery.

Ant Nest Dynamics

Ants dynamics have being widely studied for the last years due to their capacity of self-organization, which have found applications even in internet engineering.
We have dedicated big efforts to develop a sensor, and setup an embedded system to measure nest activity in order to prove self-organization in the colony.
Preliminary results as well as a description of the sensing system are described in the paper Measuring Activity in Ant Colonies. Rev. Sci. Instrum. 77, 126102 (2006).
Our current focus is set on creating a model to reproduce our measurements.

Read more on social insects or the measurement system.

Elevator automation

Internet embedded systems are ubiquitous nowadays, everything from industrial production lines to home appliances are now plugged to the internet. We developed a proof of concept system to controll an antique Otis elevator (early 1920's) using the SNAP embedded platform. This paves the way to a narge number of unusual things in an elevator, namely sending e-mails or SMS to the maintenance personnel or being remotely configured throug web interface.

Download the presentation (PPT) to learn more.

Granular Matter

Granular matter is one of the best examples of a "complex system" you can find. Involving so many particles, and showing solid-like behaviors for some situations while having fluid-like behavior for others, they are of great interest to the scientific community as well as to engineers. Even if they have being studied in depth for many decades they can still surprise you with new phenomena such as "revolving rivers"; a new, very particular way of sand pile formation; and "uphill bumps"; soliton-like bumps moving against the flowing sand in a sand pile.

Read more about granular matter.