Stephania was born in Palmira, Colombia, a city surrounded by green fields, rivers, and beautiful mountains. Growing up in a country rich in biodiversity inspired her deep passion for nature and led her to pursue a B.Sc. in Biology with an emphasis in Marine Biology at Universidad del Valle (Cali, Colombia). From early in her undergraduate studies, she knew she wanted to become a marine biologist. With every fieldwork experience along the Colombian Pacific coast, she fell more in love with the ocean and gradually shifted her focus from marine invertebrates to coral reef fishes, her greatest passion.

During her bachelor’s degree, she was an active member of the Coral Reef Ecology Research Group. Her undergraduate research examined how habitat structural complexity influences body size distributions within coral reef fish communities at Gorgona Island in the Tropical Eastern Pacific. She also contributed to the Coral Reefs Monitoring System (SIMAC), conducting underwater visual surveys of reef fish communities. After graduating, she continued as a Research Assistant, investigating the role of coral reef cryptofauna and their contribution to the diet of coral reef fishes.

In 2019, she participated in the Red Sea Summer Program at KAUST, an experience that inspired her to pursue graduate studies in the Red Sea. She joined the Reef Ecology Lab as a master’s student in 2020, where she studied trophic niche partitioning among coral reef fishes using visual stomach content analysis, DNA metabarcoding, and stable isotope analysis.

Currently, Stephania is a PhD candidate in Marine Sciences at KAUST, investigating how life-history traits and ecological dynamics of coral reef fishes respond to environmental variability in the Red Sea. Her research integrates fisheries datasets, community ecology, and trophic analyses to understand how temperature gradients, productivity, and seasonal upwelling shape growth, maturity patterns, and feeding strategies of coral reef fishes. She combines field surveys, molecular tools, stable isotope analysis, and statistical modeling in R to better understand how environmental change reshapes marine ecosystems and to contribute to their conservation.

You can follow Stephania's research on the following platforms: