New Team member: Gabriel Alejandro Goyanes

Get to know more about CERENA's new Team Member- Gabriel Goyanes

What will you be doing at CERENA?

I will be a researcher in the ALTITUD3 Project funded by the FCT and directed by the PhD Sandra Heleno. My tasks will be flight different UAV´s (drones) platforms applying different apps and planning softwares in order to improve the results achieved by low cost drone´s surveys. It will be a hard work because of we need make several flights at different altitudes using different onboard sensors and then expend a lot of time processing them in the office.

Could you please tell us about your scientific journey?

When I was 17 years old, I lived in El Calafate (Argentina), a small town (in those years) close to the Andean Range and to the awesome glaciers (Perito Moreno, Upsala…). This context gives me the idea to study Geology.  In 2004 I went to Buenos Aires´ city to make my college career in the Buenos Aires University where I graduated in 2010. My research studies were focused in subsurface deformation due to glaciers advances (glaciotectonism) during the Last Glaciation in the areas close to my town. This research was awarded by the Midland Valley Exploration LTD from the United Kingdom (2nd place in the “Structure Prize” 2009).

Then I made a PhD at the same university with a fellowship of the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) from Argentina. My researches were focused in the interactions between the landforms and the active volcanism, the permafrost occurrence, and the Climate Change in Deception Island (Antarctic Peninsula). During these years I started to cooperate with Portuguese scientists of the CEG-IGOT from Lisbon University being my Co-director the PhD Gonçalo Vieira.

I began a Post-doctoral fellowship granted by the CONICET in the Instituto Antártico Argentino (IAA) with the orientation of the PhD Gonçalo Vieira in 2015. During this period (2015-2017) many researches were made in cooperation between Argentina and Portugal. They were focused to analyze the geological risk over the Antarctic infrastructures associated with permafrost degradation.

Now, I have obtained a post-doctoral contract in the Altitud3 project directed by the PhD Sandra Heleno at the CERENA – IST / Universidade de Lisboa. We are applying different UAV platforms in order to improve the results achieved by low cost drones.

Any tips for young researchers, PhD students and Pos-docs, or someone reading us who wants to become a scientist?

At this moment in the World´s History, we need more Scientists that explore how the people could work together in order to reach an equilibrium between the nature and our day-to-day life.

Our duty as scientists is to be the connection between the people that take decisions and the society, because the solution is not fast, and we need to teach it to our next generations.

For these reasons I encourage to the students to be the new generation of scientists.