Today you will hear from Melania Guerra, a super inspirational and inspiring woman. She is from Costa Rica with an American background and originally studied mechanical engineering. Afterwards, she did a PhD in Oceanography at Scripps in Southern California, interned at NASA and worked at several research institutes focusing especially on ocean acoustics before she transitioned into public policy and science diplomacy, working at the United Nations for a yeaar. After getting another Masters Degree in Public Policy, Melania is since this year working as the Director of Science Strategy at Planet in Berlin, which is where I finally met her in person.

What I love very much about this conversation with Melania, unlike my previous episodes, is that we really kind of drift through a lot of common interests and topics. We talk about her research in ocean acoustics and how this science informed public policy, discuss the BBNJ and Deep Sea Mining treaty negotiated during our recording at the United Nations, hop over to her current work place and generally discuss the importance between technology development and marine science. To me, she really embodies what I think about when I envision an interdisciplinary ocean expert—I hope you enjoy this conversation and excuse our drifting off topic hear and there.

“Show notes” for the first time, this is the coral atlas Melania mentioned in the end where satellite data played an important role:

https://www.allencoralatlas.org/

Cover art: Simon + Anna Madlener. Based on the Spilhaus world projection.

Music and Sound Effects: Lukas Bindel

Mixing: Anna Madlener

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