Darien Mizuta, Ph.D.

Education

• Ph.D. Fisheries and Environmental Oceanography - Kyoto University (Japan), 2014
• M.Sc. Biological Oceanography - University of Sao Paulo (Brazil), 2010
• B.Sc. Oceanography - University of Sao Paulo (Brazil), 2007

Professional History

Darien is an oceanographer with an undergraduate degree from the University of Sao Paulo where she worked in a paleoceanography laboratory studying the application of stable isotopes to sea-level changes and the occupation of shell mounds in the estuarine complex of Cananeia, on the coast of Sao Paulo. As an undergraduate she also worked as a field researcher and volunteer environmental educator with the Southern Right Whale Project (NGO) and as a trainee in marine shellfish culture in Itajai Valley University. In 2010, with bivalve shellfish as her main interest, she got a Master of Science degree researching the use of open-source environmental data to manage Pacific oyster farm production in Santa Catarina. While in her master course, Darien went to Japan as a short-term visiting researcher in sustainable aquaculture at Kagoshima University. She moved to Japan subsequently for follow-up doctoral studies at Kyoto University. Her dissertation focused on improvement of water conditions for oyster aquaculture during summer, using an artificial upwelling system. In 2014, she started working as a postdoc on fisheries ecology projects in the same laboratory. In 2015, based at the Department of Risk Management and Environmental Science of Yokohama National University, she concentrated her research in fisheries management and ecosystem services in coastal ecosystems under the framework of the United Nation’s Satoumi framework of human and nature sustainable coexistence. She joined NOAA as a United States National Research Council postdoctoral scholar at the end of 2016. Her current project involves the selection of sites for offshore mussel aquaculture using oceanographic data. Her interests include bivalve shellfish ecology and aquaculture, environmental oceanography, fisheries management and application of Satoumi framework in fisheries science.