CAIO DELLA COLLETA VIANNA, a first year master`s student, graduated from the University of Sao Paulo at Sao Carlos School of Engineering (EESC – USP), Brazil, in 2017 with a Bachelor of Environmental Engineering. For his undergraduate thesis, he worked with an aquaponics system to analyze and characterize the solids produced to ultimately evaluate their potential for reuse. Also while at EESC, Caio was awarded with a 2015 scholarship from the Brazil Scientific Mobility Program (BMSP), a government initiative to send Brazilians students abroad for training in STEM fields. While in BMSP, Caio completed a prestigious internship at Virginia Tech’s Seafood ARC (Agricultural Research Centers) program. In this role, he worked closely with leading aquaculture researchers on water quality management, feed management for scientific trials, live feed culture, and larval farming techniques.Caio deepened his knowledge in Recirculating Aquaculture Systems (RAS) and gave him the confidence pursue sustainable aquaculture as a post-graduate career. 

As a Latin American Fisheries Fellow at Bren, Caio is pursuing a specialization in Coastal Marine Resources Management with a primary interest in fisheries and aquaculture. Caio wants to explore questions that will help inform some of the frontiers of aquaculture sustainability, such as feeds, energy and water inputs, responsible control of diseases and genetics, environmental contamination, organism health and nutritional value, and impacts and risk from atypical climatic events.  His post-graduate goal is to contribute to broader food security and sustainable fisheries in Brazil and more broadly across Latin America.