Sofia Nogueira is a PhD student at MARE-Madeira and the University of Madeira, using low-cost technologies to study the biodiversity and ecology of the archipelago’s mesophotic and twilight zones. Her work aims to generate baseline data on benthic and pelagic communities, identify the drivers of biodiversity patterns, and map biotopes around Madeira.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in Biology from the University of Lisbon, Portugal, and a master’s degree in Marine Sciences from Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Before her PhD, she applied molecular tools to study invasive species, including eDNA-based early detection, diet metabarcoding to assess their impacts on the food-web, and genetic markers for integrative taxonomic identification and to assess potential origins and introduction routes.