Catarina Frazão Santos is Senior Researcher and Lecturer on marine planning at the Department of Animal Biology, University of Lisbon, Portugal. With a background in marine biology and environmental management, her research focuses on the multiple dimensions of ocean sustainability, particularly the development of sustainable and adaptive marine spatial planning (MSP) initiatives under global change. Catarina has been advocating for and providing expertise on ‘climate-smart MSP’ at multiple levels and forums. Catarina is member of the ICES Working Group on Marine Planning and Coastal Zone Management (Denmark), integrated member of MARE—Marine and Environmental Sciences Center/ARNET—Aquatic Research Network (Portugal) and visiting scholar at NOVA School of Business and Economics (Portugal). She is founding Editor-in-Chief of npj Ocean Sustainability.
Elena Gissi, PhD, is a Marie Sklodowska Curie (MSCA) Fellow, Visiting Scholar at Stanford University, Hopkins Marine Station, USA, and Senior Researcher at the National Research Council, Italy. Her research focuses on understanding and modelling the responses to climate change of marine life at multiple levels of biological organization, to incorporate this knowledge in marine management for adaptation and mitigation of climate change. She currently works to integrate sex analysis in ocean sciences to harness the creative power of biological sex for innovation and discovery in marine biology. She has over a decade of research experience in producing and integrating ecological knowledge and insights in decision making processes. She has applied her findings in marine spatial planning (MSP) in the Mediterranean Sea, and also in environmental and energy planning. Elena is member of the Editorial Board of npj Ocean Sustainability.