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About

Dr. Emanuela Fanelli is a pioneering marine scientist whose work bridges deep-sea ecosystem restoration and the exploration of extraterrestrial oceans. Her research focuses on developing innovative technologies for monitoring and upscaling restoration efforts in vulnerable deep-water environments, addressing the urgent need to combat anthropogenic habitat loss below 200 meters. Her most-cited paper (2024, 51 citations) directly responds to the UN’s call for ecosystem restoration, proposing new sensor and platform technologies to scale interventions in these inaccessible realms. Fanelli’s visionary scope extends beyond Earth: her 2020 work (28 citations) designs a bio-exploration concept for Saturn’s moon Enceladus, leveraging deep-sea sensor tech to search for putative life in its exo-ocean. Most recently, she has pioneered a digital-twin strategy using robots for real-time marine ecosystem monitoring (2025), ensuring data follows FAIR principles for open science. With over 80 combined citations across her top papers, Fanelli’s contributions are not only technically groundbreaking but also globally impactful—positioning her at the forefront of both planetary and deep-sea conservation science. Her work inspires a new generation of researchers to think across scales, from Earth’s abyssal plains to the outer solar system.