Giuliana Panieri

Professor Giuliana Panieri is an Italian geologist and researcher who serves as Director of the Institute of Polar Sciences at the National Research Council of Italy (CNR-ISP). Her research focuses on extreme marine environments, climate change in polar regions and methane emissions from the ocean floor.

After graduating from the University of Bologna and earning her PhD from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in 2001, she developed an international academic career. For more than a decade, she served as Full Professor of Geology at UiT The Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø. She has also held leadership roles in international scientific organisations, including President of the Biogeosciences Division and General Secretary of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).

Panieri uses fossil foraminiferal shells as biogeochemical archives to reconstruct past ocean conditions and methane release events. She has led numerous Arctic Ocean expeditions, including coordinating the team that discovered the Borealis Mud Volcano in the Barents Sea, a finding published in Nature Communications.

Beyond her research, she advocates for science diplomacy, the protection of polar biodiversity and ocean literacy. She develops inclusive outreach projects, including OceanSenses and educational comics for children, to make ocean science accessible to wider audiences.