Dr. Marina Cortês
Marina Cortês, Ph.D. is a Research Faculty member at the Institute for Astrophysics and Space Sciences at the University of Lisbon and the founder of Biocosmology, a pioneering scientific field bridging cosmology and biology, with over 20 years of experience in theoretical cosmology and fundamental physics.
She is an award-winning astrophysicist who is also an eight-thousand-meter Himalayan mountaineer, as well as a ballet dancer, uniquely combining the worlds of science, art, and adventure to maximize human potential.
Marina is known for her groundbreaking work on time irreversibility in cosmology, which earned her the inaugural $10,000 Buchalter Cosmology Prize in 2015, jointly with theoretical physicist Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute. Read The Universe as a Process of Unique Events and Time comes first: Cortês and Smolin win cosmology prize.
Marina is currently pioneering Biocosmology, the first bridge connecting cosmology and biology — scientific areas that were previously disconnected due to a lack of a common mathematical framework and tools.
This interdisciplinary approach represents the first quantification ever of our planet’s value against the vastness of the cosmos. Her collaboration with Stuart Kauffman, Andrew Liddle, and Lee Smolin has resulted in three foundational papers that establish this new scientific discipline. The team’s press conference announcing Biocosmology was uniquely conducted from Everest Base Camp on April 21, 2022, where Marina was preparing for her summit attempt. Watch Biocosmology Press Release, 21–Apr-2022 from Everest Base Camp.
First introduced at the Google SciFoo meetings in May 2021, the work proposes that there are more microstates contained in the phase space of the biosphere than there are in that of the entire remaining Universe. Read Biocosmology: Towards the birth of a new science, Biocosmology: Biology from a cosmological perspective, and How the New Science of Biocosmology Redefines Our Understanding of Life. Watch Biocosmology: The birth of a new science! – Marina Cortês.
Marina has conducted extensive research in both large observational collaborations and theoretical frameworks spanning four continents. She worked at the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Berkeley from 2009 to 2012, where she worked during a period that saw two Nobel Prizes awarded to the institution. She was a visiting researcher at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada, and worked at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh in the UK. She has contributed to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and MS-DESI collaborations.
Her 2013 Physical Review Letters article Anomalies in an Open Universe was selected as a Special Highlight by the American Physical Society, an honor given to less than 1% of publications in this prestigious journal. Read Interpreting DESI’s evidence for evolving dark energy and On data set tensions and signatures of new cosmological physics. Watch Andrew Liddle | Interpreting DESI’s Evidence for Evolving Dark Energy.
Marina’s unique career trajectory began as a professional classical ballet dancer, training 5–6 hours per day at the Arts Conservatory in Lisbon. At the age of 19, she moved to Amsterdam to pursue a professional ballet career, dancing professionally until the age of 25, when injuries led her to focus fully on astrophysics.
Her transformation was inspired by reading Carl Sagan’s Contact at the age of sixteen, while studying at the Conservatory for Dance. “It had a profound impact on me: that I would always want to be an astrophysicist from then on.” This dual perspective continues to inform her approach to both research and mountaineering. Read Marina Vinhas Cortês.
Marina earned her Ph.D. in Cosmology from the University of Sussex in 2009 under the supervision of Professor Andrew Liddle, focusing on The old and new universe in the era of precision cosmology. Her doctoral research explored inflation dynamics and dark energy reconstruction, developing techniques that improved CMB constraints by up to five times. She earned her undergraduate degree in Theoretical Physics from the University of Lisbon. Between 2012 and the present, Marina has been Research Faculty at the Institute for Astrophysics and Space Sciences in Lisbon, Portugal.
Marina’s mountaineering achievements include summiting Cho-Oyu (8201m) in 2019 with minimal supplemental oxygen (used only above 7,700m), making her one of only a handful of Portuguese women to summit an eight-thousand-meter peak. Her goal is to climb Mount Everest (8,848m) without the use of supplemental oxygen.
In April and May 2022, she put together her first expedition towards this goal, reaching 7,200m on the Lhotse Face before logistical constraints prevented further progress. Her husband and children joined her on Everest after the expedition and they all landed on Everest Base Camp by helicopter together. Marina organized a fundraiser for Nima Tshering Sherpa, a Himalayan lifesaver who was injured. Watch Swan Lake on Everest through a Telescope and read Disrupting the Giant.
Marina has published over 52 papers, with more than 1,000 citations, and has collaborated with leading physicists, including Lee Smolin, Stuart Kauffman, Andrew Liddle, and João Magueijo. Her recent work includes developing the TAP equation for evaluating combinatorial innovation and exploring quantum coherence in consciousness modeling. She has given talks at prestigious venues including Cosmology from Home, where she presented An Observer’s Philosophy of Physics and AI Risk and Risk Assessment in Cosmology in June 2024.
She is actively engaged in science communication and has written extensively about the intersection of AI, consciousness, and cosmology. Read Physics, Time, and Qualia, AI language models and reductionism, and The intelligent new born – on artificial intelligence.
Marina organized the influential Time in Cosmology Conference at the Perimeter Institute with Lee Smolin and Roberto Mangabeira Unger, bringing together leading physicists, cosmologists, biologists, philosophers, and artists to discuss the millennium-old puzzle of time. This invitation-only meeting was featured in Quanta Magazine as a unique interdisciplinary gathering. Her philosophy of exploiting the collision of the different worlds of Art, Science and Adventure exemplifies her approach to maximizing human potential. Read A Debate Over the Physics of Time.
Marina was born in 1974 in Portugal and lives in Lisbon with her husband, renowned cosmologist Andrew Liddle, who is ranked in the top 0.05% of scientists worldwide according to Stanford University’s analysis. The couple combines their scientific work with Marina’s artistic and mountaineering pursuits. Marina continues to advocate for pursuing multiple passions, stating that “Dance is a lifelong legacy and a part of me, and everything I do.” She regularly tells students: “Never believe people who tell you that you must choose, that you can only do one thing.”
Read Marina Cortês – Sou cosmóloga, montanhista e bailarina.
Visit her Homepage, Institute Profile, ResearchGate profile,and Wikidata profile. Follow her on Facebook, Instagram, ORCiD, and Academia.