I am a marine biologist, working mainly on taxonomy and phylogeny of calcareous sponges using morphological and molecular tools. I also carry on projects on population genetics, reproduction and ecology of sponges. My focus, however, is on the development of a phylogeny based classification for calcareous sponges. In this sense, I have projects on molecular phylogeny and search for morphological signal in these phylogenies. I am also interested on population genetics, in order to understand how populations are connected, and in invasive sponge species and their reproduction and population structure. Since 2010, I am editor of the class Calcarea in the World Porifera Database in WoRMS. Currently I am head of the Graduate course on Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.