Daviana Berkowitz-Sklar

Daviana Berkowitz-Sklar, raised in Costa Rica and California, is pursuing a PhD in oceans at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. She earned her bachelor’s degree in ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale University. Daviana aspires to develop collaborative, science-based solutions to improve the health of ecosystems and the people who depend on them. She is interested in marine spatial ecology and socio-ecological systems and has conducted research in Costa Rican fishing communities with the DynaMAR Project at Stanford. Daviana was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship as well as a Yale postgraduate fellowship to research whale migrations at OKEANOS-University of the Azores and a Rohr Reef Resilience Fellowship to study coral reef resilience at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. Daviana is the co-founder and president of a nonprofit organization, Nature Now International, through which she leads programs to engage youth in community-based science and conservation, including hands-on work with wildlife, citizen science, and STEM education.