Maria Morell

Dr. Maria Morell is a research associate at the Institute for Terrestrial and Aquatic Wildlife Research (University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Germany). Her main research interests are framed in the fields of hearing and effects of anthropogenic noise on marine mammals. More specifically, her expertise focuses on inner ear ultrastructure with the objective to understand high-frequency hearing adaptations in toothed whales and to detect cases hearing loss in marine mammals. She started working on the auditory system of cetaceans (group formed by whales, dolphins and porpoises) during her Master and PhD at the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC-Barcelona tech, Spain). Then, she moved to the University of British Columbia (Canada) for a first post-doc and to the Institute for Neurosciences of Montpellier (INSERM, France) for a second post-doc, to further extend her knowledge on inner ear anatomy and pathology in cetaceans. Her research has implications in the fields of comparative anatomy, conservation of endangered species, as well as underwater noise management.