Growing up in Colombia gave Sofía the opportunity to explore the great biodiversity that it holds and this influenced her to study biology with a particular focus on entomology and evolution. By the end of her bachelor degree, Sofía's concern about the pressure humans were imposing on the planet motivated her to change fields and study conservation and climate change. Sofía completed a masters degree at Macquarie University with Professor Lesley Hughes, where she studied the effects of carbon dioxide on floral traits of horticultural plants. Afterwards, in Colombia, Sofía worked with NGO’s in two different topics: 1) how to engage the community in the mitigation and adaptation to climate change and 2) surveying the entomofauna of critical endanger dry forest to upgrade its conservation status.

Sofía is currently a PhD student at the University of Queensland, supervised by Dr. Eve McDonald-Madden and Dr. Margaret Mayfield. Her research is based on the grounds that pollinators’ diversity is rapidly declining and one of the main factors is agriculture expansion. Her project will apply optimization models to understand the optimal expansion of agricultural lands and the conservation of pollinators in the wild. Additionally, Sofía will investigate the negotiations for conserving natural areas between different stakeholders in heterogeneous agricultural landscapes.