Fernanda Santos, Ph.D.

I was born and raised in Brazil. My hometown is Nova Iguaçu - labeled as gritty by the New York Times. My dad was a waiter and my mom was a 24hr-mom. When I was 14 years old my dad enrolled me in a 4-year private English course, after which I enrolled at IBEU to prepare for the TOEFL test.

 

I received my B.Sc. in Geography from the State University of Rio de Janeiro. While I was majoring in Geography, I did a 3-year internship at the Soil Research Institute of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, and worked in different projects focusing on the impact of land degradation on soil quality. I moved to the US in 2004. I earned my MA degree in Physical Geography from Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY), in 2007. My doctoral dissertation primarily focused on soil carbon and nitrogen dynamics in temperate forest soils under the advisement of Dr. Jeffrey A. Bird in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Queens College, CUNY. I am also a former fellow of the NSF IGERT Biosphere-Atmosphere Research and Training, a multidisciplinary training program in which doctoral students conducted research at the interface of biospheric and atmospheric sciences. From 2017 to 2019, I was a UC Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow, under the supervision of Dr. Asmeret Asefaw Berhe (UC- Merced) and Dr. Sanjai Parikh (UC-Davis). My postdoctoral research was broadly focused on understanding factors controlling dissolved organic carbon transport from soils to rivers. From 2019 to 2022, I worked with Dr. Elizabeth Herndon (ORNL) as a postdoc and my work explored the interactions between manganese, carbon, and warming. I am currently a staff scientist at ORNL. For more information about my education and professional experiences, please check my CV.

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Things I enjoy besides research: watching birds, hiking, going to the beach, Brazilian barbecue, rice and beans, (good) dark coffee, making buttermilk pancakes for family and friends, traveling, collect information on family history, and fishing. I also make nice caipirinhas. Ze Ramalho is one of my favorites Brazilian singers. Listen to him below.