Stephania is a biologist, passionate about oceans, fish and marine sciences.

She studied biology, with an emphasis on marine biology at Universidad del Valle, Colombia. During her undergraduate degree she worked on marine ecology and oceanography. Stephania was an active member of the Coral Reef Ecology Research Group, with which she developed her B.Sc. degree project examining the effects of habitat complexity on the size frequency distribution of a coral reef fish community of Gorgona Island, Colombian Pacific. As a member of this research group, she was involved in the Coral Reefs Monitoring System (SIMAC) on Gorgona Island, working with the coral reef fish community.

After graduating in 2019, Stephania’s enthusiasm and fascination for fish led her to work as a research assistant at Universidad del Valle on a research project in which she investigated the feeding habits and trophic niches of coral reef fishes by analyzing the stomach content of two fish species of the Eastern Tropical Pacific. In 2019 Stephania participated in the Red Sea Summer Program, a marine science workshop at KAUST, while still an undergraduate student, and this opportunity was enough to convince her to continue her marine science training on the wonderful reefs of the Red Sea. Stephania joined the Reef Ecology Lab as a master’s student in 2020 and is interested in developing her master’s research project to focus on assessing the habitat use and trophic ecology of coral reef fish of the Red Sea.