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Jessica Zamborain-Mason is an interdisciplinary marine scientist working at the intersection of marine ecology, fisheries science, aquatic food systems and human nutrition. She is an Assistant Professor of Marine Science at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia, where she leads the Integrated Reef Fisheries Lab. She is also a Department Associate at the Department of Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University, and a Visiting Researcher at the Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University.

Her research addresses a fundamental challenge: how can marine ecosystems be managed not only to sustain biodiversity and ecological function, but also to support food security, nutrition and human well-being? She develops quantitative approaches to understand marine socio-ecological systems, assess the sustainability and potential of fisheries, and reveal how environmental change affects the availability and nutritional value of aquatic foods. Her work spans ecological and fisheries modelling, remote sensing, large-scale data synthesis and nutritional analysis, connecting processes from marine ecosystems and food production to human diets and health. A defining feature of her approach is the integration of global datasets and comparative analyses with field research, local knowledge and context-specific evidence, allowing her to identify broad patterns while addressing the realities of data-poor fisheries and coastal communities.

Jessica's research career has taken her from Spain, where she studied Marine Science at the University of Vigo, to research internships in Mexico and Portugal, and subsequently to Australia. Supported by a La Caixa scholarship, she undertook an MSc in Fisheries Biology and Management at James Cook University, followed by a PhD at the same university in collaboration with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. Her doctoral research developed quantitative approaches for assessing and managing data-poor, multispecies coral reef fisheries. Fieldwork with fishing communities in Papua New Guinea brought a further dimension to this work, highlighting the importance of reef fisheries not only as natural resources and sources of livelihoods, but as essential contributors to food security and nutrition. This experience shaped her subsequent move into nutrition and public health, through postdoctoral research at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and work in Madagascar. She later held a Marie Curie Research Fellowship at Lancaster University before joining KAUST, where she now applies this integrated perspective to the Red Sea and wider global challenges facing aquatic food systems.

Her research has contributed to advancing understanding of both the ecological sustainability and nutritional significance of aquatic resources. This includes developing approaches to establish fisheries reference points where conventional data are scarce, and investigating the nutritional value of aquatic species at an unprecedented scale. Her work on the nutritional value of invertebrate aquatic foods, encompassing estimates for more than 50,000 species and 30 nutrients, illustrates the potential of biodiversity to contribute to global nutrient security. Her research has been published in leading scientific journals, including Nature and Science.

Across her work, Jessica has built an international network of collaborations spanning marine science, fisheries, data science, nutrition, public health and other disciplines. She works with researchers, practitioners, policymakers and coastal communities, and is committed to developing research that advances scientific understanding while informing real-world decisions. At its heart is a conviction that has shaped her career: the health of marine ecosystems and the well-being of the people who depend on them cannot be considered separately. Her ambition is to help build the knowledge and approaches needed for aquatic food systems that are ecologically sustainable, nutritionally valuable and resilient in a changing world.