Grounded in 17 years of coral reef field experience across the globe, Renato's research blends ecosystem functioning, macroecology, natural resource science, and oceanography by integrating field data, modelling, and meta-analysis. Growing up in landlocked rural Brazil, Renato gradually made his way to the coast, where he completed a B.Sc. and M.S. at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, followed by a major dispersal event for a Ph.D. and brief postdoctoral appointment at James Cook University (Australia). In 2022, Renato was awarded a Branco Weiss Fellowship – Society in Science, hosted at CRIOBE (Paris Sciences and Letters University) in Perpignan, France. In early 2026 Renato moved to KAUST to establish his own research group. The Reef-Ocean Connectivity Knowledge Hub (ROCKNHub) addresses the fundamental question of what drives reef productivity and the biological and human dimensions that emerge from it.
