Melania Guerra is an engineer, oceanographer and scientific diver, with a passion for science, exploration and life in extreme environments.She is currently a Post-doctoral Associate at the Bioacoustics Research Program at Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology. Her research focuses on developing methods to quantify the impact of anthropogenic noise on the acoustic ecology of marine mammals, specifically in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas around Alaska, where oil and gas exploration activities take place in ice-free months, concurrent with many whale species migrating through the areas.
During her doctoral research at the
Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) in San Diego, California, she gained 7 years of oceanographic experience as a member of the
Laguna San Ignacio Ecosystem Science Program, collecting acoustic data using bottom-mounted sensors and acoustic tags that are applied with suction-cups on the whale’s bodies. She has performed fieldwork with gray whales in San Ignacio Lagoon, Baja California, Mexico and other whale species along the California coast, in Southeast Alaska and in the Arctic Ocean. Melania is a certified AAUS Scientific diver and has completed Cold Water/Weather Survival training and Helicopter Underwater Egress training (HUET).
In 2002, before joining the
Marine Physical Laboratory at SIO, Melania worked at the
Advanced Space Propulsion Laboratory at
NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. While at NASA, she worked under the tutelage of astronaut
Franklin Chang Diaz, conducting experiments on a High Temperature Superconductive Magnet, part of the
VASIMR propulsion system.
Originally from San Jose, Costa Rica, Melania received a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2001 from the
Universidad de Costa Rica. There, she interned at the Applied Nuclear Physics Laboratory, performing spectral analyses with a Residual Gas Analyzer Mass Spectrometer. Growing up in San Jose, Melania also attended the German-language immersion
Humboldt Schule and is fluent in German, Spanish and English.
In her spare time, Melania enjoys communicating her passion for science through public outreach programs, visiting local schools, and has appeared on televised media encouraging women into STEM careers.
