Pedro Tavares

Pedro Tavares, born in Oliveira de Azeméis, Portugal, holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in Physics Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) – University of Lisbon, Portugal. This academic path originated from an early dream of grasping the intricacies of modern theoretical and fundamental physics.

However, while exploring these subjects at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium, as part of an Erasmus Exchange Program in his first year of Master’s, he also reacquainted himself with fluid dynamic topics that had previously caught his interest throughout his Bachelor’s studies. During this rediscovery, he developed a profound appreciation for the potential of modelling approaches in predicting various Earth-related physical phenomena and understanding their impact on people’s lives, as well as the way humanity interacts with the planet.

This shift in focus led him to recenter his research on oceanography and dynamical modelling, culminating in a master’s thesis developed between Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil (LNEC) and the Center of Physics and Engineering of Advanced Materials (CeFEMA), Portugal, focusing on improving surfability assessment on a submerged detached breakwater. This work recently earned him the Best Engineering Physics Thesis 2023/2024 award in Interdisciplinary Physics at the Department of Physics of IST.

After attending his first international congress and deciding to pursue a research-oriented career, Pedro is pleased to begin a joint PhD between Institut Français de Recherche pour l’Exploitation de la Mer (Ifremer) in France and Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Australia. He will address the recent decline in seagrass concentration in Reunion Island using a modelling approach and is confident his multidisciplinary experience in numerical modelling – ranging from cosmology during an internship at Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço (IA) to ocean dynamics in his master’s thesis – will provide a unique perspective when tackling new problems.

Understanding and predicting the causes and the consequences of seagrass fragmentation in the lagoonal environment of Reunion Island

Outside of his research, Pedro enjoys reading, hiking, and going on road trips with friends. One of his greatest passions is music, having played the violin from an early age. He continuously tries to keep practising by joining local orchestras wherever he lives.