Biography

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Beatriz Fernández obtained a degree in Biology at the University of Barcelona (UB). After graduating, she started a PhD in Oceanography (Microbial Ecology) at the Marine Science Institute (ICM-CSIC; Barcelona) under the supervision of Prof. Carlos Pedrós-Alió and Prof. José González. During her PhD she mainly studied the ecology of marine Bacteroidetes (a group of heterotrophic bacteria) from a genomics perspective. During those years, she did several internships, one of them at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology. She also participated in several research cruises, such as the TARA Ocean research cruise. After obtaining her PhD, she moved to Chile where she carried out two postdocs. The first one, at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, where she studied the bacterial diversity (metagenomics) of both Arctic and Antarctic seawater and sea ice. The second one, at the University of Chile, where she investigated the bacterial communities associated to Chilean altiplanic plants (Atacama Desert). Currently, she is a postdoctoral researcher at the Biological Oceanography Group (GOB) at the Institute of Oceanography and Global Change (IOCAG) where  she is researching the effects of environmental stressors on phyto- and bacterioplankton communities of the Subtropical North Atlantic Ocean (Canary Islands).