Victor Callais

Bonjou! Sak pase?

My name is Victor, I was born in Haiti but raised in Lisbon. I recently completed my BSc in Biology with a specialization in Marine Biology at the University of La Rochelle in France. I like to say that I studied marine biology between Portugal and France, as I concluded an Erasmus semester at the University of the Azores. At the moment, I am doing an internship at the Laboratório Marítimo da Guia to gain more hands-on lab experience.

I’ve been passionate about marine life since I was very young, and I am eager to explore how evolutionary mechanisms and ecological interactions drive biodiversity, particularly in aquatic systems. This January, I’ll be starting a MSc in Biology at McGill University in Canada (supervised by the Professor Virginie Millien), where my research will focus on the biodiversity associated with drifting Sargassum mats in Barbados. My goal is to understand how these floating “islands” of seaweed influence marine communities and what that means for conservation and management in a changing ocean.

Outside of academics, I love scuba diving, traveling, and discovering nature in different ways. I also enjoy learning new things; especially new languages, reading, and sometimes even losing myself in R coding. And if I’m not in the lab or in the water, you’ll probably find me practicing capoeira, trying another martial art or listening to music.