Sofia Gomez

Colombian marine biologist restoring coral reefs through AI-driven conservation

Sofia Gomez (born 1995) is a pioneering Colombian scientist whose organization CoralCode has revived 12km² of coral reefs in the Caribbean using AI technology. Her CoralBot robots - patented in 2021 - autonomously plant coral fragments 20x faster than manual methods, while her ReefAI platform predicts bleaching events with 92% accuracy.

Gomez's Community Reef Guardians program trains local fisherfolk in Colombia and Panama as citizen scientists, involving 5,000 participants by 2024. Her research identified climate-resilient coral species now used in restoration projects across 14 countries. In 2023, she launched CoralCoin - a cryptocurrency incentivizing reef conservation through blockchain-verified carbon credits.

Her discovery of the Porites sofiae coral species (2022) revolutionized reef restoration science. Gomez's TED Talk "How AI Can Save the Seas" (2023) sparked global partnerships with NOAA and WWF. She advises the UN's Ocean Decade initiative and recently secured $2.5M funding for her Artificial Upwelling project to oxygenate dying marine zones.