Patrizia Ziveri is ICREA Research Professor at ICTA-UAB where she coordinates the Marine and Environmental Biogeosciences Research Group (MERS) that catalyzes research on the natural and human-driven marine processes and sustainability challenges. Before joining ICREA, she obtained her PhD at the University of Padua (Italy)/University of South Carolina (USA), focusing on the impacts of El Niño climate oscillations on calcareous phytoplankton in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. After a postdoc at USC, she moved to the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, as a research scientist/associate professor. She led the first European coordinated effort to address ocean acidification in the Mediterranean Sea (2011-14).  She was the Scientific Director of the ICTA-UAB Center of Excellence ‘María de Maeztu’ (2016-20).

Research interests

Her broad scientific interest is on marine global environmental change, ecology, and biogeochemistry at various time scales and complexity. She focuses on multidisciplinary investigation from target marine organisms at the base of the food web, to marine microplastics and biogeochemical processes. With her research group she works on the ocean in a changing climate and under human pressure. linking CO₂ dynamics, climate change and target marine processes. She is interested in pressing threats to the marine environment and their societal relevance such as ocean acidification, warming and oxygen loss in different regions, both in coastal systems and open seas, from social to biogeochemical processes. With her group, she developed a specific laboratory to address microplastics in coastal and open ocean systems. Her research is bridging the natural and social systems on issues of major societal and sustainable development concern.