Giulia Sent
(Almost) Dr. Giulia Sent, was born and raised in Murano, a small island in the Venice lagoon, Italy. She grew up racing sailboats, and little she knew that spending so much time observing the sea would eventually make her a marine scientist, a very enthusiastic one. After completing a BSc in Environmental Science at University Ca’ Foscari in Venice, she moved to Lisbon for a 6 months internship. Well. 8 years later, she is still in Lisbon, living on a boat, holding a MSc degree in Marine Science and about to complete a PhD in which she specialised in Earth Observation for monitoring aquatic ecosystems.
Scientific background
Being a scientist has always been Giulia’s “impossible” dream, one of those dreams you don’t say out loud because it seems too ambitious and unrealistic. Spoiler alert: she is actually doing it!
Driven by a strong and genuine curiosity towards all natural sciences, she pursued a bachelor degree in Environmental Science at the University Ca’ Foscari of Venice. After graduating, she swept off to Portugal for an ERASMUS+ internship, where she dove into the tiny world of plankton, studying the impacts of toxic algal blooms on marine life.
That internship was THE pivotal moment of her scientific career: the encouragement and recognition from experienced researchers confirmed that she was on the right path. The MSc course in Marine Sciences at Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa was then the obvious choice.
It was during her master that she discovered a game-changer topic in marine science: Remote Sensing. The stunning, colourful and ever-changing views of the sea from space fascinated her (almost too much), and she needed to learn more about the potential of satellite observations for monitoring aquatic ecosystems. During the master she started working at MARE-ULisboa on multiple projects that integrated remote sensing methods for water quality monitoring in coastal waters.
Today, Giulia is finalising a PhD where she is developing new Remote Sensing products for monitoring water quality in coastal waters. In simple terms, she is translating the colour of the water as seen from satellites to what’s actually in the water, such as the concentration of algae or sediments.
But it is not all computer work! In order to translate the colour of the water into concentrations of what’s in the water, she spent countless hours at sea collecting water samples for analysis in the lab. She even realised her inner child’s dream of embarking on an oceanographic campaign by crossing the Atlantic Ocean (from North to the very South) aboard the RRS Discovery for the AMT29 expedition.
She is now on a personal mission to turn her sailboat into a floating lab and is seeking a Post-Doc position.
More interested in my research? Find my work here and my research institute’s personal page here.
Sailing background
Giulia started sailing at the age of seven in the Venice lagoon, not entirely by personal choice but by persuasion from sailor parents. It didn’t take long before she felt in love with the sport and everything that came with it: from skipping school for racing and training, to travelling across Europe with the team. She eventually made it to be part of the national team and compete in a 420 World Championship. After that regatta, she decided to step back from high-level competition sailing to focus on university studies.
In the later years, sailing has been in and out of her life. Eventually, pushed by a deep need for living on her own (and a general discomfort with conventional life in society), she did something she never imagined possible: she bought an old cruising sailboat to live aboard.
That boat, Sara, is now her home, her beloved companion, and her greatest teacher.
As she is sustaining a sailboat with a PhD salary, in her free time she unintentionally became a carpenter (not quite), a mechanic (she wishes), an electrician (in progress), and a fibreglass master (well, almost).
Giulia holds an Italian boat driving licence for boats up to 24m (both sail and power) without limits from the coast, and she is a certified FIV (Federazione Italiana Vela) instructor.