Dr Mariana García Criado is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Tundra Biodiversity at The University of Edinburgh, where she obtained her PhD in 2022. Her scientific research focuses on plant species responses to climate change in the Arctic. She has carried out data syntheses to understand large-scale macroecological biodiversity patterns, and has undertaken fieldwork in sites across the Arctic including the Yukon Territory, Canada and Svalbard. Her scientific work has featured in the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (2018) and cited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2022).
Prior to her scientific career, she worked at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Brussels (2014 – 2017) on projects related to threatened species, invasive species and protected areas. Her main focus was the production of assessments as part of the European Red List of Threatened Species, and she remains a Certified Red List Trainer of species’ extinction risk. Mariana has worked extensively at the science-policy interface, with her European Red List outputs contributing to measuring progress towards European directives (e.g., EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020), and collaborating with Scottish Government to improve geospatial data availability and quality across sectors in Scotland.
Mariana’s career has centred around biodiversity conservation through a cross-sectoral lens, having worked in the private sector (environmental consultancies), academia (universities in Spain and the UK), research institutions (Royal Botanical Gardens, Madrid), charities (Botanic Gardens Conservation International), international organisations (International Union for Conservation of Nature) and with the public sector (Scottish Government). Mariana is a strong advocate for equality, diversity and inclusion in science, and for a more open and reproducible science.
Dr Mariana Garcia Criado joined the SSAC on 1 December 2022.
