Carolina Bastidas is a research scientist at MIT Sea Grant’s Marine Advisory Services group. She is a marine scientist with over fifteen years of professional experience in basic and applied research on the ecology of marine hard-bottom communities and human impacts on them. After earning her PhD from James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, Bastidas was appointed to a faculty position at Universidad Simón Bolívar in Caracas, Venezuela, where she spent ten years establishing valuable collaborations between local and international colleagues and focused her work largely on coral reefs and the biology of their marine invertebrates. Bastidas’ portfolio also includes a vast array of teaching and mentoring, proposal writing, leading and managing research projects, and communicating her research results in peer-reviewed journals and through outreach activities.