BIOGRAFIA

Ana Sofia Reboleira is a professor at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon (FCUL), founder and leader of the Subterranean Ecology Research Group at the Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes (CE3C), and a Curator at the National Museum of Natural History and Science. She holds a PhD in Biology, an MSc in Ecology and Ecosystem Management, and a BSc in Biology from the University of Aveiro. She is listed among the “World’s Top 2% Scientists”, which recognises researchers with the greatest global impact, placing them among the 2% most influential in their scientific fields, according to a study conducted by Stanford University (USA).

Her discoveries have tripled the number of exclusively cave-dwelling species known in Portugal and revealed a new global hotspot of subterranean biodiversity in the country. A speleologist from a young age, she has visited more than 2,000 caves and led scientific expeditions on every continent except Antarctica. She has discovered and described more than 70 new species for science. She was recently honoured in the field of conservation, restoration and biodiversity monitoring in Portugal with the Belmiro de Azevedo–FCT Prize (2023).

Before joining FCUL, she was an Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, a Visiting Associate Professor at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, USA.