Alicia Pérez-Porro

Pérez-Porro is president of the Network of Associations of Spanish Researchers and Scientists Abroad (RAICEX) and, since March 2019, she is also the president of the Association of Spanish Scientists in the United States (ECUSA). It was the founder of the Women in Science Commission (MECUSA) within the ECUSA society to direct the promotion and visibility of the role of women in the scientific field.

For her participation in the Homeward Bound, Pérez-Porro received in 2018, along with the other three members of the team (Ana Payo Payo, Uxúa López and Alexandra Dubini), the Gold Medal of the Red Cross and the Spanish Red Crescent. That same year, she became a Women inPower Fellow, awarded to women leaders. In 2019, she was selected for the Aspen Ideas Festival Scholar.

In 2017, she was selected along with three other Spanish scientists to participate in the second expedition to Antarctica organized by Homeward Bound. One thousand women participated in this leadership and empowerment program for women in science and technology to fight against climate change. She is also on the leadership team of the 500 Women Scientists initiative.

With a doctorate in Biology from the University of Barcelona (UB), Pérez-Porro carried out her thesis on ecology and genomics of marine sponges at the Center for Advanced Studies in Blanes and at Harvard University. In addition, she completed a Master in Biodiversity at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). In 2004, Pérez-Porro received a scholarship to study at the Internal Center for Research in Marine Sciences and Limnology of the University of Costa Rica in what has become his main research topic: marine sponges. Pérez-Porro focuses her research on the effects of climate change on marine sponges of coral reefs, and its adaptation to a changing ocean. In addition, Pérez-Porro is very involved in the fight against the presence of plastic waste in the sea, and in 2018 she published several articles of dissemination in the digital newspaper El Independiente. She works as an Adjunct Professor of Environmental Sciences at Baruch College in New York. In addition, she is a research associate at the National Museum of Natural History of the United States administered by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C.

Alicia R. Pérez-Porro (Barcelona, 1981) is a Spanish marine biologist specialized in the study of marine sponges, an environmental activist and a feminist. Since 2018, she has presided over the Association of Spanish Scientists in the United States (ECUSA), from where she fights to break the glass ceiling in the scientific field and for women to occupy leadership positions.