Our Team

Juliana Lopez Angarita Phd

Director and Principal Scientist

Alex Tilley PhD

Co-Director and Lead Fisheries Scientist

Juan Felipe Caro Rodríguez

Creative Advisor
Juan Felipe Caro Rodríguez is a Colombian illustrator and graphic designer based in London. His work includes storyboarding, visual scribbling for meetings and focus groups and graphic facilitation for ideation and co-creation workshops. He also works as a freelance illustrator and across interdisciplinary projects that merge illustration with product and graphic design and is cofounder of the collaborative group cup of 3 design which works actively within the creative sector as a full design agency.”Pipe” is the creative advisor of Talking Oceans, having illustrated all our logos and posters, and making our work look as good as it should! Check out his work here: www.felipecaro.com

Melany Villate M.Sc.

Field Researcher
Melany is a Colombian marine biologist specialising in molecular ecology and conservation genetics of tropical shark species. Her particular interests lay in the evolution of different feeding habits in sharks, the migratory patterns and connectivity among whale shark populations. Melany is one of our sawfish researchers, soon to be scouring the tropical eastern Pacific in search of evidence of their current distribution. After that she will begin her PhD research at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in collaboration with the zoological state collection of Munich.

Juan Camilo Cubillos M.Sc.

Field Researcher
Juan is a biologist with a Masters in Ecology, Evolution and Systematics. His previous work has varied between ecological implications of mercury in Amazonian freshwater food webs to the distribution of planktonic species in the western North Sea. His current focus utilises the combination of molecular and ecological techniques to provide insights into animal distribution, migration and population structure in marine ecosystems. The second half of our Sawfish research team, Juan will soon be tracking through the TEP after which he will start his PhD research as part of Dr. Prof. Herwig Stibor lab in Aquatic ecology at the University of Munich.