Research Fund 26/01 :: Chiara Gambardella

Congratulations to Chiara Gambardella, a Ph.D. candidate from the Department of Life and Environmental Sciences at Università Politecnica delle Marche, in Ancona, Italy, who reached out to us with a request that immediately rang all the right bells.

Chiara has been working on Mediterranean pelagic sharks, focusing on the ecology, distribution, and population genomics of two absolute icons: the shortfin mako and the great white shark. She was accepted for an oral presentation at Sharks International, the world’s largest scientific conference dedicated entirely to elasmobranchs, which will take place this year in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

By the time the conference rolls around, Chiara will have completed her Ph.D. — which also means institutional funding will no longer be available. Attending this meeting is a key milestone at a critical moment, as she prepares to move into the postdoctoral phase of her career and bring Mediterranean shark research to a truly global audience.

Needless to say, this is exactly the kind of situation our Research Fund exists for, so we happily covered her conference registration by transferring 500 euros.

Go Chiara — and give those makos and white sharks the spotlight they deserve!