Personal Statement
Dr. Fernandez-Santos has formal education in epidemiology and education and curriculum development. Her master and doctoral level dissertations were directly related to HIV/AIDS research. Over the last 25 years, Dr. Fernandez-Santos has been a contributor as an HIV and Cancer researcher and as data manager in statistical methods and research support cores from a multidisciplinary standpoint. In addition, she has been Author or Co-Author in over 30 publications. Since 1995, Dr. Fernandez-Santos has been working in the Retrovirus Research Center (RRC) and HIV Data Core where she was also the Co-Director of the PR-CCHD Data Core of the Puerto Rico Center for the Study of HIV Health Care Disparities (PR-CCHD). Since 2010, she was the Co-Leader of the Puerto Rico Clinical and Translational Research Consortium’s Research Design Biostatistics and Ethics Unit (RDB). Subsequently she was promoted to Retrovirus Research Center Director and recently appointed as Interim Dean of Medicine and ALLIANCE Program Coordinator at Universidad Central del Caribe (UCC). Dr. Fernandez-Santos is also an Associate Professor at the Internal Medicine Department and Director of the Continuous Quality Improvement at UCC.