Dayna currently serves as a Director for the Research & Innovation office at SHPE. In this role, she oversees the Equipando Padres program, Noche de Ciencias, as well as different aspects of research and data analysis.

An industrial engineer by training, before joining SHPE, Dayna was a faculty member in the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department at Northeastern University in Boston, MA after working at theirHealthcare Systems Engineering Institute (HSyE) as a post-doctoral research fellow.

Native from San Juan, Puerto Rico, Dayna graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez Campus (¡Colegio!) and then she completed a master’s and PhD degree inIndustrial Engineering from the University of South Florida in Tampa.

Being Hispanic and an engineer herself, Dayna has a passion for increasing Hispanic representation in STEM. She currently lives with her husband Andrés, their two sons David and Sebastián, and their miniature schnauzer, Lucca, in Winter Garden, Florida.