Bio

I was born in Lisbon, Portugal, and raised in a small town on the Portuguese-Spanish border, making me fluent in both Portuguese and Spanish.

I completed a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Engineering (2002/2006), a master's degree in Ecological Engineering (2006/2010), and a PhD in Environmental Studies (2011/2015), focused on marine litter, microplastics and ecotoxicology.

All degrees were conducted at the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of Universidade Nova de Lisboa (FCT-UNL). The master’s and doctorate work was completed under the supervision of Prof. Paula Sobral and co-supervised by Prof. Richard Thompson.

During the master's degree, I enrolled for one semester in the Transboundary Water Management Master Programme at the Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, Netherlands, as part of the Erasmus programme. During my doctoral degree, I enrolled at Plymouth University, United Kingdom, to conduct training on biochemical biomarkers and histology under the supervision of Prof. Richard Thompson.

My research interests focus on marine litter and microplastic pollution in the Atlantic Ocean, where I have been working since 2008. More recently I have started expanding my research interests to science communication particularly on biodiversity loss, climate change and ocean pollution. I have also a vested interest in stakeholder engagement, ocean literacy and behaviour psychology that I explore through science communication project.

I have worked on projects such as POIZON (FCT UNL), Azorlit (MARE IMAR DOP), BASEMAN and MicroplastiX (both JPI Oceans). Currently, I am working on the Waves of Change project, funded by the Irish Marine Institute.

I was awarded the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions COFUND Collaborative Research Fellowships for a Responsive and Innovative Europe (CAROLINE), for the IMP.act project - Managing for Microplastics: A baseline to inform policy stakeholders, during 2019.

I am a member of the Marie Curie Alumni Association and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science since 2018, and a member of SETAC Europe since 2019.

In Portugal, I am the co-founder of the Portuguese Marine Litter Association (APLM), a non-profit, non-governmental organisation that liaises the creation of the Portuguese Partnership on Marine Litter, as part of the vision signed at the Honolulu Declaration in 2011, and the 2012 United Nations Manila Declaration. This organisation exists since 2013. In 2022, under the initiative of the UN Ocean Decade, this organisation established the Portuguese Speaking Country Cleanup Day, to be celebrated every year around November 18.

In Ireland, I am a member of the UN Decade Ocean Committee since its formation

I have been involved in many volunteering activities, from outreach and awareness campaigns and beach cleanups to acting and theatre performance in Germany, Ireland, United Kingdom, Spain and Portugal. 

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