Dr. Maria Fontes, PhD

Maria is a marine scientist with current interests in microbial ecology, genetics and microplastics. She has worked as a Research Associate in Brazil and Australia for nearly a decade studying the role of microbes in estuaries, lakes and open ocean, fluxes of CO₂ in the water column, biogeochemistry, and developing clean energy projects. Before coming to Australia, Maria lectured Marine Pollution, Introduction to Oceanography and Microbial Ecology at the Federal University of Santa Catarina for 4 years; she has also advised several undergraduate and graduate students in their marine research projects and theses.   

Maria has a bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry, Master of Environmental Engineering and PhD in Marine Science (Biological Oceanography).  

Maria has collaborated with scientists from the United States of America, Switzerland, Chile, Brazil and Australia, resulting in the publication of more than 20 scientific papers and book chapters. She is fascinated by micro-scale processes and their relationship with the planet functioning - how the tiny microbes respond and regulate the environment, and how we can apply artificial intelligence and machine learning to monitor the marine realm. She has recently collaborated with the Griffith Centre for Coastal Management team in analysing samples of microplastics collected from Palm Beach and from the continental shelf of Australia.  

In order to protect and create any measure for conservation, we need to understand ecosystem resilience, ecological interactions, function, which organisms are vulnerable and how they respond to stress or impact. These are a few topics that the student will learn in our marine courses.