Marcela is a Ph.D. student in Biodiversity, Genetics and Evolution at the University of Porto since 2021, where she is studying the adaptive evolution of seasonal coat color in weasels. She is a Master's (2020) and Bachelor's (2017) in Genetics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and has a Teaching Degree in Biological Sciences at UFRJ (2021). She finished her bachelor's degree with an academic distinction cum laude award and her master's with the maximum score. Marcela works in the fields of biodiversity conservation and evolutionary biology. With a background in analyzing climate change effect on natural populations, by participating from 2015 to 2017 in long-term monitoring projects (PELD-Guanabara and PELD-Abrolhos) to investigate harmful algal blooms and responses to climate change and toxicity in zooxanthellae symbionts of endemic corals of Brazil. She is currently participating and supervising projects in fisheries genetics and genomics and adaptation genomics. Marcela has experience in molecular species identification, phylogenetic analysis, Sanger sequencing, optical microscopy and flow cytometry and imaging (FlowCam), next-generation sequencing (NGS) techniques and bioinformatics. Marcela published 2 papers (1 as first-author) in international SCI journals, has received 1 award, was granted four fellowships, was invited to give two lectures in scientific events and two media interviews, and contributed to 5 talks (3 as first-author and speaker) in scientific conferences. Moreover, she holds a strong interest in science communication, participating in several events and creating a social media profile for science outreach (2020).