I am a post-doctoral researcher currently working in Dr. Asmeret A. Berhe's lab (University of California - Merced), where I investigate how fires affect the chemistry and behavior of carbon in soils and the processes leading to the movement of this C from soils to rivers.
I was born and raised in Brazil. I received my B.Sc. in Geography from the State University of Rio de Janeiro. While I was majoring in Geography, I did a 3-year internship at the Soil Research Institute of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, and worked in different projects focusing on the impact of land degradation on soil quality. I earned my MA degree in Physical Geography from Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY), in 2007. My doctoral dissertation primarily focused on soil carbon and nitrogen dynamics in temperate forest soils under the advisement of Dr. Jeffrey A. Bird in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Queens College, CUNY. I am also a former fellow of the NSF IGERT Biosphere-Atmosphere Research and Training, a multidisciplinary training program in which doctoral students conducted research at the interface of biospheric and atmospheric sciences. I currently serve as an officer in the UC-Merced (UCM) Women in STEM association, as a mentor of a UCM undergraduate student; and, together with a graduate student in my lab, I co-organize a weekly seminar series in my unit.
I am a soil biogeochemist. My research focuses on the fate and stabilization processes of C in the landscape to understand how ecological disturbances (e.g. wildfire) impact the cycling and movement of carbon from land to aquatic systems.
