Anicia Q. Hurtado is the Chair of the Integrated Services for the Development of Aquaculture and Fisheries (ISDA Inc.), an organization of past and present scientists of SEAFDEC-AQD. She finished her Doctor of Agriculture (Phycology) at Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan in 1988 as a Monbusho scholar.
She worked closely with seaweed farmers as consultant of international funding agencies like WB-IFC, ADB, USAID, AusAID, GTZ, Cargill, ZSL, local agencies like PDAP, and government agency DA-BFAR in the pursuit of sustainable seaweed farming from lab-sea-based nurseries to field cultivation. She is the lead Editor of the Book – Tropical Seaweed Farming Trends, Problems and Opportunities: Focus on Spinosum and Cottonii of Commerce published by Springer Nature in November 2017. She is currently involved as the Developing Country Partner (Phil.) of the GCRF-UKRI GlobalSeaweed* Project, a 4 –year project (Oct 2017- Dec 2021) on the ‘Sustainability of Seaweed Aquaculture in the Developing Countries’ at the University of the Philippines Visayas, Miag-ao Iloilo.
She is a member of the UK International Peer Review College since February 2018 as a reviewer of Proposals submitted for possible funding by UKRI-GCRF. She is one of the members of the European Algae Biomass Association (since Oct 2020) with a VIP status for her significant contributions to the algae sector, a clear recognition of work in promoting the sector. She has written several scientific papers published in peer-reviewed journals from micropropagation, farm management, disease mitigation to colloid characterization of Gracilaria and Kappaphycus. Likewise, she is book chapter contributor to some Algal Books. She is also a regular reviewer of manuscripts submitted to peer-reviewed journals like Algal Research, Journal of Applied Phycology, Aquaculture, Aquaculture Research, Journal Marine Policy and Botanica Marina, to name a few.
She was an invited Plenary speaker at ISAP Congress in Sydney, Australia (2014) and Nantes, France (2017) and several mini-symposia, attended several seaweed symposia as oral and poster presentor, and speaker to local and international seaweed webinars. She was a member of the local Organizing Committee (Scientific Programme) of the 16th and 21st International Seaweed Symposium in Cebu, Philippines (1998) and Bali, Indonesia (2013), respectively.