Harvard Catalyst Profiles

Jessica Zamborain Mason is an interdisciplinary quantitative marine scientist who aims to contribute towards achieving ecologic, social and economic sustainability in the world's fisheries. Jessica's research combines statistical and ecological models with empirical observational data to increase our understanding of human-environment interactions, the performance of natural resources, and inform resource management and policy. Her interests span two major overarching themes. First, as a way to identify the best context-specific pathways to manage fisheries, she is interested in developing sustainable reference points and assessing fisheries from multiple socio-ecological dimensions. Secondly, Jessica is interested in examining how natural resources, sustainable reference points, and the effective management of resources vary with ongoing environmental and socio-economic change.
Jessica completed her PhD at James Cook University and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef studies (Australia) in 2021. During her PhD, she took a long-term fisheries production and ecosystem function lens, estimating sustainable reference points and assessing the status of multispecies coral reef fisheries at global and local scales. Currently, Jessica is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Departments of Nutrition and Environmental Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Jessica's current research takes a nutritional lens to fisheries, integrating nutritional outcomes into fisheries reference points and examining the consequences of climate change, human use and management on natural resources, human nutrition and public health. Overall, she aims to improve our understanding on nutrition-sensitive approaches to fisheries management and policy.