Dr. Stefano Aliani, Italy

Stefano Aliani is Senior Scientist at Institute Marine Science of National Research Council of Italy (Section of Lerici, La Spezia). He joined the Section in 2000, after being Research Assistant at IAEA Marine Environment Laboratory in the Principality of Monaco and Research Scientist at ENEA (Italy). He was Section Head of ISMAR in Lerici for 7 years (2011-2018).
He got his Degree in Marine Biology (University of Pisa, Italy, 1991) with a dissertation on benthic biodiversity and community ecology. After that, he developed his interest for Physical Oceanography, working on the interconnections between the two disciplines and focusing on marine hydrodynamic processes and their climate and ecological implications. He has been working on distribution and dispersal of marine debris by ocean currents since 90’s and he published the very first paper ever on biodiversity of floating debris and ocean modelling. He performed his research mostly on cruises and he gained experience in sampling ocean water using a set of tools and gears in different environments and conditions, acquiring such ability by spending extended periods in remote expeditions worldwide, including polar areas, deep sea and hydrothermal vents.
He authored or co-authored 130 papers, books and proceedings (Scholar) on Physical Oceanography and Ecology. In 2017 Stefano Aliani won the award “Change the world one article at the time”: the Editors-in-Chief of Springer Nature journals across disciplines selected the scientific findings published in 2016 that they believe could have the greatest impact on society’s most urgent problems.
Stefano Aliani is a member of PAME and AMAP working groups of the Arctic Council, both dedicated to the ecological problems of the Arctic and he is a long-time member of the Italian Committee of Polar research.
He has been the chair or member of steering committees in several national and European funded projects. He is Italian representative of SCOR and chair of SCOR WG 153 FLOTSAM. He is now one of the Vice presidents of SCOR.
Stefano Aliani regularly communicated scientific results with media and was author and presenter at TV documentaries and science dissemination programs.