Introducing Mariana

Here I am!! The last one to be introduced to the World 😉

It took me a while..but I had a good excuse. I was finishing my dissertation and after that I was just recovering from this very though moment in all PhD’s lives. Apparently, I survived. I made it!!

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Let’s cut to the chase and talk about what I’m supposed to do here: I’m Mariana Perez Rocha and I’m originally from Brazil. Currently, I’m seated at the Finnish Environment Institute, nd at the same time, at the Geography Research Unit, University of Oulu. I came aaaalllll the way from Brazil to Finland in 2014 just to carry out my PhD studies. And before you ask yourself “was it worth moving to Finland”? Definitely yes! I couldn’t have had a better opportunity than this one I gladly got. Even though, over these past four years,  I have complained a lot about the weather here in Finland

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Originally, I’m a trained biologist (BSc and MSc degrees 2009 and 2014, respectively) and I received these titles from the Universidade Estadual de Maringá, Paraná, Brazil. I have been always moved by aquatic ecology I suppose. And here I am: finishing my PhD patterns of biodiversity in northern streams. I guess now I’m more an ecologist (and maybe an aquatic one?) then merely a biologist. Am I right?

During the past four years I have been 100% focused on my PhD research. So, I have been very busy trying to understand how different facets of biodiversity (i.e. species-, trait-, and phylogeny-based) vary at different spatial scales and in different organismal groups (i.e. diatoms and macroinvertebrates). Isn’t this dope? Lot’s of controversy concerning this different facets of biodiversity stuff though. One can say that analyzing biological communities through trait- and phylogeny-based approaches might present better results than the most common and well known species-based approaches. I could show in my thesis that the performance of these different approaches might depend on a lots of things, and you can read and find all this stuff out yourself soon (if you want to, of course!) when my dissertation becomes available online (I promise to post it here when the time comes).

Other than doing research, I love animals! All of them (except the cockroaches). I’m passionate about pets and I have ThE CAT. She is my sweetheart! I named her after blueberries (but in Finnish of course because she was born in  Finland). Her name is Mustikka, and yes I talk about her to everyone, every time, and all the time! Readers here couldn’t escape from that

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So, this is me in a nutshell: passionate about pets and research, love cooking and watching series (also ‘novelas’), traveling is necessary, I hate gym but that is also necessary, and Yoga is my favorite body practice. It enhances my body consciousness and high performance

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M.

 

Mustikka watching series with me and melting our hearts! She is very very fluffy and looks like a Norwegian forest cat (but she is actually mixed breed). P.S: look at those paws!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

This is me in one of my escapes from Finland: every October-January I tried to survive through the ‘most dark’ period in Finland going to USA and staying close to my relatives whom are living there.