I graduated in Biology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona; this included a year of lectures at the University of California in Santa Cruz. During my Master degree thesis in Marine Biodiversity and Conservation, I worked at the Institut de Ciències del Mar-CSIC in Barcelona, combining oceanographic expeditions, benthic surveys and GIS technology for a spatial assessment of the potential impact of artisanal fisheries’ activity in the NW Mediterranean. The aim was to provide ecological guidelines for conservation and the development of Marine Protected Areas. During the following 3 years I was involved in benthic ecology research, collaborating with projects addressing coral ecology (mainly gorgonians), and participating in rewarding expeditions in the Mediterranean and Antarctica. Gaining a better insight into ecology of marine bivalves and relating reproduction and feeding ecology to shell deposition is my role as ESR within the ARAMACC Project.  I started my PhD in April 2014.

ARAMACC PhD Project:  The biological and ecological drivers of calcification rate and increment formation in several bivalve species.

The Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries (Split, Croatia) is my host Institution and I’m under the supervision of Prof Melita Peharda Uljevic. The main goal is indeed, identifying the biological and ecological drivers that may determine shell growth in Glycymeris glycymeris, G. bimaculata and Callista chione.

I’ll mainly work with samples from different locations on the Adriatic Coast analyzing their feeding, reproduction and growth behaviors and also their surrounding environment, and in particular trying to analyse how all these factors are related to shell growth.