Dr. Nayda Santiago's achievements during the last five years are numerous. Her accolades come from the University, the community and her students. She is not only an outstanding and innovative Engineer but an advocate, mentor and above all a passionate educator. Dr. Santiago first joined the faculty of College of Engineering at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez back in 1990. As an instructor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, where she currently holds the rank of Associate professor.

Dr. Nayda Santiago has been instrumental for the Computer Engineering Program in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez. She has contributed with the Department and particularly with the Department Chairman, in the development of a Major Design Experience for the Computer Engineering Program as well as helping in the development of a Software Engineering Program.

Since early in her teaching career, Nayda began to show her devotion to teaching, motivating and guiding Hispanic students to pursue advanced engineering degrees. She is the second female faculty to obtain tenure in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department with over 65 professors. She has made it her mission to change those numbers. She is the coordinator of the FremProf Program at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez. The program seeks to challenge the status quo and increase the female representation in the male dominated college professor arena. In this project, she is serving as a mentor to a group of eight promising students she has recruited into the program.

Dr. Santiago has always being concerned with the representation of Hispanics in STEM careers and the representation of women who pursue PhD degrees. And has mentored hundreds of study to pursue advanced degrees as well as develop research projects. She has been a mentor to more than one hundred students, among undergraduates and graduates in her different research projects. From those, more than three quarters have been undergraduates for who she has been a role model and guide. Her enthusiasm and hands on personal played a key decisive role in the creation of the student chapter of the Institute Computer Engineers in Puerto Rico. Her dedication with the students, savvy guidance and charisma has helped the student leaders of this group achieve notoriety in the Engineering Community of Puerto Rico.

Not only does she guide students but she leads by example. During her career she has undertaken several projects of her own.  She has participated in 12 research projects as principal or co principal investigator obtaining funds for the University of more than 6 million dollars.

Her research interests include automated performance evaluation, high performance computing and software for embedded systems. Some of her key research is focused her analysis of the workflow model of a digital publishing system using Petri nets, to lean how to improve the performance of a visulization system called Visual Terrain Explorer (VTE).

Her influence outside her mentoring and teaching was recognized by the Institute of Computer Engineers of the Puerto Rico Professional Engineering Society (CIAPR) who awarded Nayda with the Distinguished Engineer of 2007 Award. She was elected the Outstanding Computer Engineer by the Puerto Rico College of Engineers and Surveyors in 2008.

She is a member of the IEEE, ACM, and the CIAPR. She is also an active member of the Computing Alliance for Hispanic Serving Intuitions (Calisi).

Dr. Santiago holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez, an M.E. in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in EE from Michigan State University.