Researchers
Carina Vieira da Silva is a marine biologist with a Master’s degree in Environmental Sciences and Technologies and a Ph.D. in Climate Change and Sustainable Development Policies. From 2005 to 2011, she worked in Environmental Impact Assessment and Environmental Monitoring at Instituto do Mar – Laboratório Marítimo da Guia. Since 2012 she has been working in economic valuation of environmental goods and services, following a transdisciplinary approach to improve environmental policy- and decision-making. Carina is currently a post-doc researcher at Nova School of Business and Economics. Her research focuses on the economic valuation of marine and coastal ecosystem services using revealed and stated preference valuation techniques.

Catarina Frazão Santos is an Invited Researcher at NOVA-SBE (Environmental Economics Knowledge Center), and an Invited Auxiliary Researcher and Lecturer at the Animal Biology Department of FCUL and MARE. She graduated in Marine Biology in 2006, obtained a MSc in Ecology and Environmental Management in 2008, and a PhD in Marine Sciences in 2016. After completing her PhD about Portuguese ocean policy and planning, Catarina actively focused on establishing an innovative and interdisciplinary research line on marine spatial planning (MSP) and global climate change. She is the global coordinator of R&D project OCEANPLAN (FCT-funded) and strongly engaged in international collaborations and networks - e.g. she supports the European Commission on the H2020 Programme, is a member of the EU COST action OceanGov, a Review Editor for Frontiers in Marine Science journal, and invited as an Expert to support several international initiatives and workshops (e.g. ECCWO-2018, European Comission DG-MARE Workshops).Catarina is leading author of several international scientific articles, some in top-ranked journals such as Nature Sustainability or Nature Geoscience, and has an excellent record in presenting her work at international scientific meetings. Since early in her scientific path she was awarded grants by FLAD-IMAR, FCT and ICES to develop her work (e.g. at top US institutions in marine research like Duke University Marine Lab and NOAA). She is in her 2nd year of lecturing, teaching courses on Ocean Planning and Environmental Assessment (2nd cycle). She is supervising 1 PhD student, 4 Master students, and 1 Research Fellow.

Amandine Pastor obtained her PhD in hydrology from Wageningen University (the Netherlands) in 2017. Her PhD was about how to manage the global water system to sustain both food production and environmental needs under global change. She is an expert in hydrological and vegetation growth modelling, land use modelling, climate change and ecosystem services. She also has an MSc in agriculture engineering and has worked in different projects including field work related to sustainable agriculture, water management and soil and water conservation projects in Europe and overseas. She is responsible of the development of land use scenario, erosion modelling and conservation measures for six Mediterranean sites including a forest site of NW Portugal for the MASCC project (https://mascc-project.org/node/46). She has received a grant from the COST ACTION PESFOR-W to work with Prof. Maria Antonieta Cunha e Sá on ecosystems services related to post-fire management for 5 months and is also affiliated to Faculdade de Ciencias in Lisbon (http://ce3c.ciencias.ulisboa.pt/team/CCIAM) to work with JP Nunes and TC Lourenco on EU projects related to land use, carbon and water modelling and climate change.

Aires Afonso Mbanze was born in Nampula province, northern Mozambique. I hold Ph.D. in Tropical Knowledge and Management from Nova School of Business and Economics, Universidade Nova de Lisboa and MSc degree in Nature Conservation from the Universidade Federal do Paraná. I am currently Lectures at the University Lúrio, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Environment and Nature Conservation. My research interest is related to: i) community-based natural resources management, ii) illegal natural resources harvesting, iii) valuation of nature; iv) governance of ecosystem services; v) forest structure and diversity, vi) forest fires and climate changes; and, vii) biomass and energy. I have more than 14 publications in International peer-review Journals. I am a co-founder of one small consultancy company (Ecosystem Services and Livelihood Enhancement Lda), in the field of environment and natural resources management.

Gonçalo Araújo is a Marine Biologist and has a master’s degree in Marine Biodiversity and Conservation. He also has a postgraduate degree in Marine Science, Management and Administration and has attended postgraduate studies in Data Science.He has over 1 year of at sea experience in fisheries observation and data collection for scientific research campaigns, with more then 6 years experience in fisheries. He has coordinated the fisheries observation programs in Portugal for NAFO and ICCAT , and has worked as a research fellow at CCMAR and IPMA on several commercial and recreational fisheries projects. He is currently a researcher and co-founder of an aquaculture startup. Main interest areas: fisheries, aquaculture, data science, marine species conservation, entrepreneurship, maker movement and hackathons.

João Vaz Pato holds a Master’s degree in Economics at the NOVA School of Business and Economics where he focused on the areas of Environmental Economics and Public Policy. Recently, he has been carrying out research on bioeconomic modelling of forests. His research interests in natural resource economics include the topics of forestry, agriculture and land use.

Margarida Ortigão holds a Master’s degree in Economics from NOVA SBE and a BSc also in Economics from ISEG. She has previously worked at NOVA SBE in the valuation of Marine and Coastal Ecosystem Services in the west coast of Portugal.Margarida has also spent some time doing field work in Africa, coordinating a research project in Mozambique with NOVAFRICA and working as a Research Associate for Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) in Zambia.