Marco Carlos
Future 50 Honoree of 2024
For using hydrogeology and education to empower communities and inspire the next generation of scientists
Reservoir Geologist at Geostratos ǀ Luanda, Angola
Marco Carlos had always adored camping with his friends in his Western-central African homeland of Angola. When deciding his career path, he posed himself this question: Did he see himself “in a beautiful landscape, talking to people, sweating, digging, and exploring? Or in a lab?” In the end, Marco smiles, and says the decision was simple: Outside in nature was where this hydrogeologist found his joy, and where he could do hands-on science that would address climate problems.
This work has earned him a trove of accolades that would be impressive for someone twice his age. At just 27, Marco says winning the U.N. Office for Outer Space Affairs Space4Youth competition with his geospatial research on flooding in drought-ridden Angola was a special acknowledgement of his work. (His favorite part of the award was attending space camp at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Alabama.)
Marco’s driving motivation is to use hydrogeology to solve climate problems for everyday Angolans. In his earlier work with UNESCO, and now as a reservoir geologist with TotalEnergies, Marco has seen how lack of water impacts lives and families: food scarcity during periods of drought, the lack of water for household use, disease transmission, children unable to attend school because they’re needed for the labor of hauling water to their homes every day. “People need water,” Marco stresses.
While studying at Luanda’s Universidade Agostinho Neto in 2019, Marco created the project The Child and Water, which equips rural Angolan children with scientific knowledge about water to enhance the future of innovation. “Instead of going to the communities and donating clothes or food, we donate knowledge,” Marco says, recalling the challenge of teaching a four-year-old child what a molecule is. “It gives people the perspective of: We can do science, we can get knowledge without having a laboratory, without being in a very developed country. [Children then] replicate this kind of mindset throughout the community, through all the schools. And then there are a lot of Marcos there, instead of having just one in a million.”
We create first the mindset of everything is possible.
We create first the mindset of everything is possible.
At the same time, Marco was working on the project that would go on to win the UN space competition: Efundja, a geographic information system utilizing geospatial and climate data to serve as a tool to help reduce erosion and flooding and alert communities and authorities in regions likely to be imminently hit by floods. Marco’s work melds the latest scientific advances with ancestral knowledge; “efundja” is the name for seasonal floods in the Indigenous Cuanhama language. This combination has drawn attention internationally, and Marco presented Efundja in 2021 in Nuremberg, Germany, at the International Federation of Inventors’ Associations’ trade fair.
Outside of hydrogeology, Marco’s passion to combine education with climate advocacy is alive in Geostratos, the start-up he co-founded in 2023 with a longtime friend, aerospace engineer Marco Romero. “We have a huge gap of technical opportunities for students,” Marco says, explaining that the company grants scholarships to geoscience, business, and economics students, in addition to providing other opportunities for young scientists. “We create the mindset of everything is possible. We work with them and provide them with experience that they don't have at their schools: We take them to the field. We put them in laboratories doing internships for their theses. We involve them in the projects that we are involved in, and we develop research with them.”
When he can, Marco still escapes to the Angolan wilderness, to hike, kayak, and explore caves and beaches. His abiding love for his country’s nature has inspired him and his Geostratos co-founder to develop a project to share Angola’s Seven Wonders. The two are creating virtual reality experiences of waterfalls, geological formations, and the Maiombe Forest. The thinking, Marco explains, is that virtual reality can bring Angola’s Seven Wonders to disabled Angolans unable to visit, and to fellow nature lovers around the world.