Silvia is an environmental scientist with a civil engineering and environmental sanitation background.

Her major interest is in the use of multidisciplinary approaches to environmental problems, understanding natural processes and adopting ‘building-with-nature’ measures in addressing environmental problems. 

Her elementary to high school education was completed in Bali. After completing her bachelor degree in civil engineering at Udayana University, she joined her almamater as a lecturer up to now.

She completed her Master Programme at the Centre for Environmental Sanitation, University of Ghent, Belgium with a thesis topic of soil pollution.

The topic of her doctoral thesis relates to sand dynamics and coastal erosion in Darwin Harbour, Northern Territory, Australia, using numerical modelling and geochemical studies, reflecting her concerns on conventional coastal disaster measures that often disregard the underlying natural processes at hand.