Geographer with a Master degree in Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System from Boston University and Ph.D. in Forest Resources and Conservation at University of Florida. She is the Science Director at IPAM and for the past 26 years has coordinating a research team dedicated to the understanding of the dynamics of fire and forest degradation and their relationship with land use and climate change in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes. She was part, as one of the coordinators, of the Regional Planning process along the BR-163 Highway, in Central Amazonia, which involved a multi-stakeholder process to build consensus on land use planning to mitigate the impacts of the paving of a major highway in the Amazon. Results of this process included more than 15 million hectares of forest protected by a mosaic of conservation units created along this road corridor. She has also been responsible for coordinating the development of social technologies to support better socio-environmental management and forest conservation, with the development of two awarded APPs to support better monitoring of indigenous territories and health in partnership with indigenous groups. She is the coordinator of the Cerrado Biome mapping and Brazil fire mapping within the Mapbiomas initiative, as well as the Land Use Change Sector of the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Estimation System (SEEG) initiative. She is one of the lead authors of the Science Panel for the Amazon.