Martina Mascioni

Martina Mascioni is a PhD student of the Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata (Argentina) under her advisors’ supervision, Dr. Gastón Almandoz at the Phycology Division and Dr. Maria Vernet at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, USA. In 2019, Martina was awarded with IAATO-COMNAP and SCAR fellowships to travel to California and collaborate with Dr Vernet and Allison Cusick, also at Scripps. Due to the pandemic, her travel is currently on hold until international travel is deemed safe and available. 

Martina was born in Ushuaia, Argentina, one of the cities that most tourists visit before or after their trip to Antarctica. She lived there until she was five years old and then she moved with her family to San Luis, a city in the centre of the country. When she was 18, she moved to La Plata city to pursue a scientific career as a biologist. In 2016 she was granted the degree of Bachelor in Biology with honours and the next year started with her PhD thesis focused on the ecology and taxonomy of the phytoplankton of the coastal zones (fjords) of the western Antarctic Peninsula. Martina is passionate about her work with microalgae and although she is finishing her PhD thesis in a couple of years, she hopes to keep working on polar phytoplankton for many more to come.