Carolina Levis one of the winners of the 2017 Nanocell prize

A doctoral student of INPA's graduate program in Ecology, Carolina Levis, has won the Nanocell Institute's 2nd Award for Scientists and Entrepreneur of the Year, in the category Biotechnology in Agronomy and Industry, for her research on the pre-columbian domestication of tree species in Amazonian forest. 

The Nanocell Institute is a private non-profit organization seated in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, devoted to the promotion of education, science and technologies for social development. The prize winners were elected through online voting of all people registered on the Institute's website. 

Ms. Levis studies the influence of pre-columbian inhabitants on the species composition of Amazonian forests since 2010, when she started her master's project at INPA. Her most recent article was published in Science, and presents the results of the integrated analysis of two extensive Amazon-wide datasets, one containing information on more than 3,000 archeological sites, and another one containing data on species composition and abundance of 1,170 botanical survey plots. The analysis revealed that tree species that were domesticated in pre-columbian times are five times more likely to be hyperdominant, and also that diversity and abundance of domesticated species tends to increase in forests on and around archeological sites. You may read about another publication in Science by Ms. Levis here.

Ms. Levis pursues her doctoral studies in co-tutelle agreement between INPA and Wageningen University & Research, in the Netherlands. She is supervised by Flávia Costa and Charles Clement at INPA, and Frans Bongers and Marielos Peña-Claros at Wageningen.

The image shows Carolina Levis, on the left, accompanied by her supervisors in Brazil, Flávia Costa and Charles Clement.