Participants
Amazon Aquaculture Project Workshop
Porto Velho, Rondônia, Brazil, July 04-07, 2022
Rafael Almeida
Rafael is a sustainability scientist motivated by the challenge of providing energy, water, and food to a growing human population in a fast-changing world. Having a background in aquatic sciences, his work largely revolves around balancing benefits and socioenvironmental costs of water infrastructure and managed aquatic ecosystems. Greenhouse gas emissions and climate change are common threads in his research. Currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, he is especially interested in hydropower and aquaculture.
Nathan Barros
Nathan Barros is an ecologist interested in understanding the carbon budget in the aquatic and terrestrial environment. He is particularly interested in the anthropogenic effect on carbon sequestration and emission. Nathan Barros was born in the southeast of Brazil, where he grew up in the countryside in close contact with the natural environment. Currently, an assistant professor at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF), Dr. Barros received a Ph.D. in Ecology from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, an M.S. and bachelor’s degree in Biological Science from UFJF. As an assistant professor at UFJF, he coordinates the aquatic ecology laboratory, where he does research and teaches.
Jucilene Cavali
Jucilene Cavali is a doctor in anima science, specializing in the area of meat quality. A professor at the Federal University of Rondônia, she develops research into sustainable animal production in the Amazon, focusing on the native fish market and waste use. She is part of the Graduate Programs in Environmental Sciences-PGCA / UNIR and Animal Health Production-PPGESPA / UFAC. Leader of the Research Group on Agri-environmental Technologies and Waste Utilization.
Claire DiLeo
Claire DiLeo is a third year veterinary student at Cornell University. She is interested in production animal medicine, women’s access to agricultural value chains and resiliency of food systems in the face of climate change. Claire grew up on a small farm in Western Massachusetts and received a BS from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Carolina Doria
Carolina Rodrigues da Costa Doria is originally a Biologist with PhD degree in Socio-environmental Science - Interdisciplinary. She is a Full Professor in the Biology Department, Rondônia Federal University, coordinate of Ichthyology and Fisheries Laboratory and also a member of the Ação Ecológica Guaporé (ECOPORÉ), a Brazilian NGO and a leader o the Amazon Dams Researcher Network; She has worked for around 15 years in the fields of environmental conservation and development of the Amazonian regions in Brazil. Her research interests include ichthyology and fisheries management, community-based management of natural resources, dams impacts, invasion impacts, governance, and resilience of socio-ecological systems in the Amazon.
Francisco Farina
Fernando Farina is the president of the National Aquaculture Commission (CNA). President of ACRIPAR.
Alex Flecker
Alex Flecker is a professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University and a freshwater ecosystem ecologist with more than 35 years of experience working in tropical South America. His research themes include understanding the role of biodiversity in shaping aquatic ecosystems, fish and fisheries biology, ecosystem consequences of invasive species, sustainability science, and human impacts on aquatic ecosystems and their ecosystem services. He is keenly interested in tradeoffs involving complex sustainability challenges, including hydropower expansion and aquaculture in the Amazon Basin.
Carlas Gomes
Carla Gomes is a Professor of Computer Science and the director of the Institute for Computational Sustainability at Cornell University. Her research area is Artificial Intelligence with a focus on large-scale constraint-based reasoning, optimization, and machine learning. Computational Sustainability is a new interdisciplinary research field, with the overarching goal of studying and providing solutions to computational problems for balancing environmental, economic, and societal needs for a sustainable future.
Bruce Forsberg
Bruce Forsberg is an aquatic ecologist and conservation biologist with 35 years of experience in the investigation, conservation and management of the Amazon River Ecosystem. For many years he was a Senior Research Scientist at the INPA (spell out) before moving to his current position at the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation.
Sebastian Heilpern
Sebastian Heilpern is an ecologist and sustainability scientist focusing on understanding the causes and consequences of biodiversity change. He is particularly interested in the intersection between aquatic ecosystems, fisheries and food security. Born to two Latino immigrants, he grew up between Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Brooklyn, NY. Currently a Cornell Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. Heilpern received a PhD in Ecology and Environmental Biology from Columbia University, an M.S. from the University of Chicago, and has worked with the Wildlife Conservation Society for over 10 years on issues related to freshwater conservation in the Amazon.
David McGrath
David McGrath is a geographer who has worked primarily on Amazon fisheries and community-based fisheries management policy. More generally he has worked on conservation and development policy issues in the Amazon basin. Dr. McGrath received his PhD from the Geography Department of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his M.A. from the Geography Department of the University of Arizona. He is currently Deputy Director of the Earth Innovation Institute, based in San Francisco, CA, and a professor in the Graduate Program Society, Nature and Development of the Federal University of Western Pará.
Francisco Medeiros
Francisco Medeiros is the Director of the Brazilian Fish Farming Association (Peixe BR).
Felipe Pacheco
Felipe Pacheco is an ecologist interested in interdisciplinary research that focuses on exploring feasible alternatives to support the transition to a sustainable future. Dr. Pacheco received his Ph.D. from the Earth System Science Center of the National Institute for Space Research in Brazil. As a scientist motivated by researching the water-energy-food nexus, his work is centered around the following question: “how to ensure water, energy and food security in the future under the increasing demand for natural resources and climate change?” His current research as a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell Institute seeks to identify how expanding aquaculture can contribute to sustainable and nutritious food systems in the Amazon Basin.
Tamiris Santos
Tamiris Santos is a representative of the Rondônia State Secretary of Agriculture
Suresh Sethi
Suresh A. Sethi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Natural Resources & the Environment, and member of the New York Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at Cornell University. Suresh works at the interface of quantitative science, ecological, and socioeconomic disciplines to advance marine and freshwater fisheries sustainability. His research portfolio is multidisciplinary, including development of novel statistical tools for ecology, fisheries management science, and socioecological systems assessments. Prior to joining Cornell, he worked as the Alaska Region biometrician for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and spent a stint as a commercial fisherman. Suresh earned an M.S. and Ph.D. at the University of Washington. In addition to his faculty appointment at Cornell, he is a Faculty Fellow at the Cornell Atkinson Center for a Sustainability, a University Fellow at Ulster University, and Affiliate Faculty at Alaska Pacific University.
Lariessa Soares
Lariessa Soares is a doctor in Biodiversity and Conservation at the Laboratory of Ichthyology and Fisheries of the Rede Bionorte Post-Graduate Program at UNIR - Federal University of Rondônia; Master's Degree in Animal Production from UNIBRASIL; Bachelor's Degree in Animal Science from the Federal University of Mato Grosso (UFMT). Laboratory of Ichthyology and Fisheries at UNIR.
Marta Ummus
Marta Ummus is a geographer, master in remote sensing. She has worked for the last ten years as a geoprocessing analyst at Embrapa Pesca e Aquicultura, working in participatory mapping of artisanal fishing routes and spatial analysis of the aquaculture productive chain. She is the coordinator of the project that gave rise to the Strategic Territorial Intelligence System for Aquaculture in Brazil - https://www.embrapa.br/en/site-aquicultura. She recently started studies of zoning aquaculture.
Petterson Vale
Petterson Vale is the head of a Rondônia-based startup that maps aquaculture production across Brazil, bussola.farm. The main product that bussola.farm provides, MaPeixe, shows the location, size and other characteristics of fish farms to interested stakeholders. The goal of MaPeixe is to help the market, governments and other interested parties take better investment decisions by knowing where the aquaculture production is. Petterson is an economist with a Ph.D. at the London School of Economics.
Xiangtao Xu
Xiangtao Xu is an assistant professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell. He and his lab are interested in studying the terrestrial biosphere using various computational approaches including environmental remote sensing and numerical modeling. He is particularly interested in the resilience of tropical forests under global change.