Sara Novais holds a PhD in Biology and is a Research Scientist at Polytechnic of Leiria. She is currently part of the coordination board of MARE-IPLeiria and co-responsible for the CETEMARES scientific infrastructure in Peniche, exclusively dedicated to research on marine resources. Her main research focuses on understanding how pollution and other global change stressors affect marine organisms, particularly megafauna, with the ultimate goal of supporting conservation, sustainable management and ocean health. She is overall interested in the study of animal ecology and physiology, along with stress mechanisms using "omic" technologies and other biomarker tools applied to the fields of marine ecology, conservation and ecotoxicology. The final goal of her research is to provide means and tools to better monitor the marine environment and contribute to improved management and conservation actions. She is involved in several national and international projects with both academia and industry and her experience in the supervision of academic thesis include 7 PhD students and 20 MSc students. She has authored over 150 communications in international conferences and 104 full articles in international peer-reviewed journals (Scopus H-index: 31; https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=23025463300).