Dr. Marielos Peña Claros is Professor at the Forest Ecology and Forest Management group of Wageningen University & Research, the Netherlands. She is co-chair of the Science Panel for the Amazon (SPA). She is a tropical forest ecologist, with over 30 years of experience. She works on forests responses to a variety of human disturbances, such as logging and shifting cultivation. She aims to understand how forest recovery can be enhanced, and how forests can sustainably be managed for a variety of forest products. She works mostly in Bolivia and Brazil. She is a member of several research networks such as the Tropical managed Forest Observatory and the Secondary Forest networks. She is also a member of the Academic Board of Wageningen University, and has served on several other boards.