Marina Hirota is an associate professor in the Department of Physics at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, where she teaches undergraduate courses in meteorology and engineering, and graduate courses in ecology. She is an also an affiliated researcher at Brazil LAB at Princeton University. He has a multidisciplinary academic background with a PhD in Meteorology from INPE (National Institute for Space Research), and MSc. and Bachelor degrees from Unicamp (State University of Campinas) in computer engineering and applied mathematics, respectively.

She is dedicated to combining mathematical and computational tools to understand the mechanisms leading to changes/tipping points triggered by the interplay of disturbances such as climate change, fires land use change and deforestation, as well as quantify the resilience of tropical ecosystems, particularly in South America, with far reaching consequences to the entire planet.