Short Bio.

During her Master´s thesis, Juliana Vianna worked in the Amazon, the coast of Brazil, Florida and Puerto Rico studying ecology and genetics of the manatees. After her Master´s thesis she moved to Chile to study her PhD in Ecology at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile investigating phylogeography of marine and river otters in South America. During the PhD she went to an internship in the Genomic Diversity lab, NIH Maryland USA. Juliana Vianna held an Assistant Professor position in the Universidad Andrés Bello in 2005, and since 2010 is an Assistant professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Here, she founded the Laboratory of Molecular Biodiversity to expand the research of population genetics to other vertebrates including Antarctic organisms. Since then, she led or co-led 16 research competitive government funding projects, including PI of the initiation FONDECYT project 11110060 (2011- 2014) “Associations between avian malaria, MHC genes diversity and Population structure in Humboldt penguin (Spheniscus humboldti) and Magellanic penguin (Spheniscus magellanicus)”. In 2012 she awarded as PI the INACH project G06-11 (2012-2013) “Evaluation of historical and contemporary climate change over the Antarctic penguins adaptation”; later she was also awarded as PI the Fondecyt Regular 1150517 (2015-2018) “Comparative Phylogeography and Adaptation of penguins: using genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping”, INACH (2015-2017) “Microevolution of penguins in Antarctica: genomic-wide SNP analysis to understand adaptation”. She awarded also two Fondecyt as co-PI and other international projects. At present, she is PI of the Fondecyt 1210568 (2021-2024) “Genomic Adaptation to Polar environments: introgression, common ancestor adaptation or convergent evolution of Arctic and Antarctic seabirds?”. She is currently PI the associative project PIA CONICYT Genomics Antarctic Biodiversity (http://www.antarcticgenomics.cl/) together with several PI of the present Millennium Institute Proposal. This 3-years project (now extended for one year due to the suspension of the 2020-2021 Antarctic summer campaign) deals mainly with evolutionary aspects of Antarctic and sub- Antarctic marine Biodiversity. She is also PI of Fondap Center for Genomic Regulation and Fondequip projects to acquire an equipment to sequence DNA long reads to generate a better de novo genomics assemblage. She was the director of master’s degree program in Natural Resources in the PUC (2010-2018) and responsible to have submitted the program to reevaluation which resulted in the approval for another 8 years. She advice thesis in the PhD programs of Agriculture Science in PUC, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in the U. de Chile, and the Conservation Medicine in UNAB, Veterinary Medicine program at U. de Concepción. In 2018, she won an academic sabbatical year at University of California, Berkeley and California Academy of Science, San Francisco. Recently she was invited as keynote speaker at the world Antarctic conference (The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, SCAR) in Tasmania, 2020, which is an important invitation for the main conference gathering all Antarctic research areas. The same year she also won the Adelina Gutierrez prize for outstanding young researcher from the Chilean Academy of Science.

Her research on diverse topics of genomics diversity and adaptation, has been published in 5 book chapters and over 40 manuscripts in peer review journals, most of them as first author or corresponding author. She has published in 2020 a PNAS manuscript as first author mentioned in the international media and selected as PNAS cover. Currently advice two post-doctorate, 3 PhD students, 2 Master’s degree and two undergraduate, and thesis concluded of 6 PhD, 15 Master’s thesis, 8 undergraduates. She has invited to give several talks in several national and international conferences, museums (e.g. California Academy of Science), universities (e.g. University of Stanford), general public (e.g. “congreso futuro” Magallanes 2021), conferences, schools, and courses.

At present, she is member of the Director of the Chilean Society of Evolution for the second period of time, academic member of Global Change Center PUC, evaluator in one of the study groups of FONDECYT projects (National Research and Development Agency), and reviewer editor on the Editorial Board of such as PNAS, Molecular Ecology, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, PlosOne, Journal of Mammalogy, Antarctic Science, Polar Biology, Ecohealth, Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution.