Ricardo Leon Sampedro

Ricardo Leon-Sampedro is a researcher at the Professorship for Theoretical Biology (Bonhoeffer group) within the Department of Environmental Systems Science at ETH Zürich, Switzerland. His work focuses on the persistence and evolution of plasmids in complex gut microbial communities, combining experimental and computational approaches.

• Specializes in plasmid maintenance, transfer, and adaptation
• Investigates horizontal gene transfer dynamics and evolutionary interactions between plasmids and bacterial hosts
• Conducts research on plasmid dissemination in clinical settings

His research has been published in leading journals like Nature Microbiology and Nature Ecology & Evolution, covering topics such as antibiotic resistance evolution, plasmid fitness costs, and multi-species microbial interactions. While no scientific awards are listed in the provided material, his work directly addresses public health challenges through evolutionary microbiology frameworks.

He actively welcomes students interested in microbial evolution, plasmid biology, and quantitative approaches to mobile genetic elements. Key research themes include community-level microbial interactions, in vivo plasmid evolution, and translational resistance mechanisms.