Born in Portugal, Dissertation at the Marine Biological Association in the laboratory of Colin Brownlee (Plymouth, United Kingdom). As a postdoctoral fellow, she worked with Akira Peters and Mark Cock to establish the brown algae Ectocarpus as a model organism in evolutionary research. Since 2006 she worked at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Roscoff and intensified her research on the life cycle and reproduction of brown algae. Since 2010, she led the Algae Genetics team at the Roscoff Biological Station together with Mark Cock and was appointed Research Director at the CNRS in Roscoff in 2015. Coelho has led several research projects on the evolution and development of brown algae, including two ERC grants (SEXSEA and TETHYS). She has been awarded the bronze medal of the CNRS (2015) and the Trogoboff Prize of the French National Academy of Sciences (2017). Susana Coelho is Director and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute for Biology Tübingen.