Joana Costa holds a BSc in Aquatic Sciences (2007) and a PhD in Biomedical Sciences from ICBAS (2012), University of Porto. After working for some years on the field on environmental toxicology, aiming on the effects of emergent pollutants in aquatic biota, she has recently started to focus on the study of microbiomes from extreme environments, such as the Arctic and Antartida, as a researcher in the Microbiome Ecology and Biogeochemistry group in CIIMAR. Within the framework of different projects, such as the N-MicroArctic and Permamerc, and using Next Generation Sequencing technologies, her work is directed to the characterization of prokaryotic communities, their role in specific biogeochemical cycles (such as Nitrogen and Mercury cycles) and the assessment of climate change effects on these communities. By applying specific bioinformatic pipelines on metadata collected along different locations along Arctic and Antartida coastlines and ocean waters, her work aims to unravel the adaptations of these prokaryotic communities into a changing world.
