Hiba graduated in Human health - Neurosciences at the University of Mohammed V Rabat Morocco during which she invested two years’ in social entrepreneurship. She has honed her leadership skills by leading her communication team within the organization and supporting other team members’ environmental projects based on sustainable solutions for sustainable businesses. Hiba’s enthusiasm for the environment preservation grew wider and the need to tackle questions about the health of the marine world for the planets’ future expanded internationally. After securing her master’s degree in marine Bio-Ecology at the University of Cagliari-Italy (UniCa), she enrolled in the Italian national PhD program about Sustainable Development and Climate Change at the Istituto Universitario di Studi Superiori (IUSS Pavia) PhDSDC for its multidisciplinary aspect and cultural diversity, which advocates for international cooperation. Hiba strongly believes that gathering forces to encounter climate change consequences and protecting our ecosystems will increase chances for better mental and physical health.

As part of her environmental mission, her deep understanding of the need to crossing bridges and breaking social barriers to manage a collaborative global-international and culturally diverse society, she is learning different languages and is working on mastering her Spanish and Turkish skills, as she is currently fluent in Arabic, French, English and Italian.

Her PhD research aims at improving knowledge and fulfilling knowledge gaps about the ecological performance of key species, habitats, and ecosystems functions under different climate change pressures. Between modelling climate change IPCC scenarios and mapping species’ habitat suitability (based on their thermal performance), her project aims at bridging science-based evidence of climate change impacts on Mediterranean Sea vulnerability with the policymakers’ and stakeholders’ need of making adequate decisions to preserve oceans’ life.

Joining the European Topic Centre team at the University of Málaga (ETC-UMA) for her second year PhD for six months, Hiba is working on two major tasks; developing spatial indicators on climate change pressures (altered thermal conditions) in the Northwestern Mediterranean Sea to assessthe vulnerability of the Pelagos sanctuary’s biodiversity, subject to ecologically stressful maritime traffic, and the whole Particular Sensitive Sea Area (PSSA region); and  supporting the team for scavenging the scientific literature database on the Pelagos Sanctuary. Both contributions are meant to feed the Geoportal created for the SPAMI with endorsement from the Pelagos Secretariat.