Dr. Rivera-Jiménez, originally from Puerto Rico, is currently a Lecturer at the Department of Engineering Education and an affiliate faculty to the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering, University of Florida. She works towards creating teaching curricula for chemical engineering design courses and implementing activities for local and national community outreach. Her research focuses on understanding the processes that contribute to the persistence and retention of underrepresented minorities in academic engineering programs during formal and informal educational experiences. Also, she is interested in studying unconscious biases in engineering design teams, and in creating professional development workshops for industry/academia using blended instructional tools.