Organization & participation in scientific meetings
2025
Co-chair of two conference sessions and co-workshop lead on scientific writing
Oikos-Finland 2025
“Ecology and evolution: Patterns, processes, and applications”
Workshop
“What journal editors and reviewers want to see in your next research article”
University of Jyväskylä
Jyväskylä, Finland
2024
Technical and data co-lead
Environmental Data Science Innovation & Inclusion Lab (ESIIL)
Kick-off meeting
Part of Professor Bala Chaudhary’s National Science Foundation (NSF, USA) grant “Advancing fungal dispersal ecology through traits and data harmonization”
University of Colorado, Boulder
Boulder, Colorado (USA)
Invited speaker and presenter
12th International Mycological Congress
Maastricht, Netherlands
Fungal Traits and Behaviours in Soil Session
Presentation
“Untangling the role of fungal network morphology in soil carbon dynamics”
Workshop co-chair and speaker
12th International Mycological Conference on Mycorrhiza
Manchester, United Kingdom
Workshop presentation
“Refining arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal traits for enhanced ecological predictability”
Invited speaker and workshop participant
Workshop on the Biophysics of Fungal Spore Dispersal and its Relevance to Plant Disease
University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa
Conference speaker and poster presentation
6th biennial Nordic Society Oikos (NSO)
Lund, Sweden
Urban Ecology Session
Conference talk
“Urbanization alters fungal functional diversity: Larger-spored and pathogenic taxa thrive in cities”
Poster Presentation
“Untangling underground battles: Mycelial network traits predict strategies of soil fauna and fungi during grazing”
2023
Symposium Chair
“Unravelling the underground: New insights into plant-soil ecology from diverse fields”
Ecological Society of Australia (ESA) Annual Conference
Darwin, Australia
Conference talk:
“Embracing fungal multifunctionality”
Conference Speaker
Ecological Society of America Annual Conference
Portland, Oregon (USA)
Conference talk:
“Symbiotic status alters fungal eco-evolutionary offspring trajectories”
2022
Conference Speaker
Australasian Evolution Society Annual Conference
Canberra, Australia
2019
Selected Speaker
Fourth Symposium on Spatial Networks
Oriel College
University of Oxford
Oxford, United Kingdom
Conference talk:
“Fungal spatial networks: Their use in ecology and network science”
Lead Organizer
Fungal Networks Workshop
University of Oxford
Oxford, United Kingdom
2016–17
Workshop Co-Organizer and Founding Member
Fungal Traits Database Workshop
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS)
University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
2014
Selected Speaker
“Ecological understanding of root-infecting fungi using trait-based approaches”
33rd New Phytologist Symposium
Zurich
Switzerland
Editorial, reviewing, and scientific publication
Professional outreach & development
JYU Visiting Fellow Host
2024 & 2025
University of Jyväskylä
Finland
Two-time host of Dr. Adam Frew from Western Sydney University (WSU) in Australia for research stays at JYU. These stays have resulted in concentrated research work and output, including four research publications.
Interactive Exhibition
JYU Researchers' Night 2024
University of Jyväskylä
Finland
Part public exhibition and community outreach, part recruitment for master’s student projects, this exhibition showcased the output of my Academy Research Fellowship project to date and its innovative approach to measuring the morphology of fungal networks combining microscopy, image analysis, and multivariate statistics.
"Writing in the Sciences"
Workshop Organizer
2024
Organized a two-day workshop that included individual writing-coaching sessions for seven participants from two departments. The five workshop modules trained participants in writing for peer-reviewed journals and developing highly competitive funding applications.
University of Jyväskylä
Finland
Workshop co-organizer
“Measurement of fungal transport networks"
2020
University of Oxford
United Kingdom
Creator of open-source databases of fungal trait data
As part of a network of researchers, I created these publicly available databases to support researchers investigating fungal traits.
Zanne, AE, Abarenkov, K, Afkhami, ME, Aguilar-Trigueros, C.A. et al. (2020). “Fungal functional ecology: Bringing a trait‐based approach to plant‐associated fungi.” Biological Reviews. 95[2]: 409–433
Scientific Advisor
As scientific advisor, I help biology students from El Salvador pursue careers in science.
Fundación Naturaleza (non-profit foundation
El Salvador
Supporter of open-access, reproduceable science
To actively promote open science in academia, and to encourage reproduceable academic pipelines, I have made publicly available open repositories in GitHub for every publication for which I am first author
Science Careers column guest contributor
Published essay about my career to date as a biologist, arguing that students from developing countries needs greater opportunities to pursue careers in science
Aguilar-Trigueros, C.A., (2016). “The questions that opened doors,” Science 353(6295): 190.