Team
Umberto Lombardo
Umberto is a physical geographer who studies the events and processes that shaped the Amazonian landscape during the Holocene. His interests include neotectonics, fluvial geomorphology, paleosols, pre-Columbian agriculture, plant domestication, settlement patterns and the region’s earliest hunter-gatherer occupations. He is leading DEMODRIVER (ERC-COG), where his team is investigating the early human presence, landscape modifications and environmental change of Llanos de Moxos – Bolivian Amazon
Kate Dudgeon
Kate is an environmental archaeologist specialising in phytolith analysis. She is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the DEMODRIVERS project at ICTA-UAB, where she is currently building a new reference collection of plant material from the Llanos de Moxos, Bolivia. She is also optimising phytolith extraction and slide mounting techniques for the digital scanning of archaeological phytolith samples
Albert Gaitan Roca
Albert is an archaeologist specializing in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing, currently pursuing a PhD in Dremodriver at ICTA and the Department of Prehistory. His primary research revolves around the spatial analysis of Forest Islands in Bolivia, with a focus on various levels of morphological and landscape study. His research is enhancing our understanding of the relationship between ancient human activities and the formation of landscape features in the Amazon.
Giovanni Manzella
Giovanni is an environmental archaeologist with a focus on stable isotope analysis for paleoecological and paleoenvironmental reconstructions. His research has mainly focused on the study of climate, environmental dynamics and human adaptations over time. His PhD within the DEMODRIVERS project focuses on the high-resolution paleo-precipitation records from the Bolivian Amazon by analyzing the hydrogen and carbon isotope composition of plant waxes extracted from archaeological sites.
Andrés Mejía
Andrés Mejía is originally from Mexico City and he received his degree in Physics and Anthropology by Dartmouth College, his Master’s Degree and PhD by the Pennsylvania State University. He arrives at DEMODRIVERS after two years as a Postdoc in the Embodied Cognitive Science Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan. He has over a decade of experience in archaeology, leading the project “The Palaeohydrology of the Valley of Teotihuacan” in the Mexican Altiplano and collaborating in other projects in the May Area and the south of Central America. Andrés specialises both in developing and applying new quantitative and qualitative methods to study the coexistence of living beings and their natural environments and cultural-humanistic approaches to contextualize the issues. Within DEMODRIVERS, Andrés generates demographic models off the radiocarbon determinations and also builds the AI for classifying phytoliths.
Geanina Butiseacă
Geanina is a geologist and geoarchaeologist specialized in palaeoenvironmental, palaeoclimatic and palaeogeographical reconstructions at various time scales, with a special interest in biotic feedback. She is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher in the DEMODRIVERS project at ICTA-UAB, where she is working on biomarkers, sedimentological and chemical analysis of cores, and general tectonics and depositional setting of Llanos de Moxos Basin (Bolivia) during the Holocene.
Pau de Gregorio-Rocasolano
Pau de Gregorio-Rocasolano is a geneticist (B.Sc. in Genetics, UAB, 2020-2024) and studies a Master’s in Bioethics at VIU. Pau works as a laboratory technician in the DEMODRIVERS project at ICTA-UAB, actively participating in the extraction of phytoliths. He gained research experience with the Genomics and Transcriptomics of Synucleinopathies group at IGTP in 2023 as an intern and has worked as an environmental technician, focusing on science communication.
Julián Puig Guevara
Julián Puig Guevara is a Master in archaeology student at UAB and is an intern at the DEMODRIVERS project. He assists the team with diffusion of through media and the webpage. His main interests are Theoretical approaches to Prehistoric Archaeology and the Archaeology of Ancient Migrations.
Molly Spater
Molly is a tropical palaeoecologist with special interest in long-term vegetation dynamics and drivers of change within Amazonian landscapes. She is a Postdoctoral Researcher with the DEMODRIVERS project at ICTA-UAB where she is working with pollen, non-pollen palynomorphs, and charcoal to reconstruct human-environmental interactions in the Bolivian Amazon since the late Pleistocene.
Rebeca Álvarez Gómez
Rebeca is studying a mid-level degree in Laboratory Operations at the Escuela del Trabajo in Barcelona and is currently doing an internship at ICTA-UAB within the DEMODRIVERS project, actively participating in phytolith extraction. She has a strong interest in chemistry, biochemistry, and microbiology, as well as in scientific research and development.
Former Members
Lautaro Hilbert
Lautaro is a PhD Archaeologist with an emphasis on Archaeobotany and is currently a post-doctoral research fellow of DEMODRIVERS at the ICTA-UAB. He has ample experience with microbotanical remains from the Amazon, primarily focusing on phytolith analysis of shell mounds and Loma sites from the Bolivian Llano de Mojos region.
Adrián Rivas
Adrián is a first-year biomedical and clinical laboratory student. He holds an internship in the DEMODRIVERS project, as laboratory assistant, developing tasks related to the cleaning of samples and phytolith extraction.
Marina Delgado
She is currently a Clinical and Biomedical Laboratory student at Joviat School, as well as a Psychology student at UOC. She has a strong interest in scientific research, particularly in the field of laboratory science. In her role as a laboratory assistant as an intern, she is responsible for performing various procedures, including sample cleaning, phytolith extraction, and preparing samples for microscopic observation.
Project Partners
