Born and raised near the sea, I was determined to spend my professional career in the marine environment. I graduated as a marine geologist from the University of Ghent, Belgium and followed this up with a Master in Marine Geotechnics from the University of Wales at Bangor. This led me to work as an offshore geophysicist for more than five years. After seeing all those beautiful seascapes, I decided I´d rather dedicate my career to the marine environment and joined the marine geosciences group at the University of Barcelona. Over the years, my research related to climate change, Antarctica, submarine landslides and submarine canyons.

In 2006, I joined the UNEP Shelf Programme at GRID-Arendal, assisting developing States and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) with the delineation of their continental shelves. Acknowledging the linkages between natural systems and the people living in these systems, I increasingly became more interested in the bigger picture, from the poles to the mountains, from source to sink and more importantly the interaction between humans and the environment. More recently, the gender dimension -- the differences between men, women, children and adults in their interaction with nature -- has caught my interest.

I work on a variety of topics in marine, polar and high mountain contexts, always with the aim to improve the communication of scientific findings in an appropriate and accessible way to policy-makers in order for them to make the right choices in drawing up policies aiming at sustainable solutions to the challenges of climate change and environmental degradation.