Patrizia Ziveri is ICREA Research Professor at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA-UAB) Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). She coordinates the Marine and Environmental Biogeosciences Research Group (MERS) focusing on the natural and human-driven marine biogeochemical 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) and other international initiatives. She was the Scientific Director of the ICTA-UAB Center of Excellence ‘María de Maeztu’ (2015-20) and chief scientist of several oceanographic cruises.

Her work focuses on marine global environmental change, ecology, and biogeochemistry at various temporal scales and complexity. She focuses on multidisciplinary investigations 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 dedicated laboratory to address marine microplastics. She also supports socially relevant marine studies in coastal Africa. Her research is bridging the natural and social systems on issues of major societal and sustainable development concern.