FemProf

Marisel Villafane-Delgado was born on July 26, 1986 in Caguas, Puerto Rico. Since she was about six years old, she started feeling a great curiosity about household electronics. During fall of year 2001, she started studying Industrial Electronics at the Vocational High School of her hometown. In 2004, she had the opportunity to participate in the Skills USA VICA Competitions in the Electronics Technology category, and represented Puerto Rico in the National Competitions held in Kansas City, Missouri. After high school, she enrolled in the Electronics Engineering Technology program at the University of Puerto Rico, Bayamon Campus (UPRB).

During the summer of 2007, Ms. Villafane participated in the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Maryland, where she worked in a research project entitled "Thermal Characterization of SiC Power Semiconductor Devices" under the supervision of Dr. Allen R. Hefner. During the 2007-08 academic year, she worked in a project entitled "Dynamic Simulation of Biological Black Holes in Neural Circuits" at the UPRB under the supervision of Prof. Joaquin Medin. In June of year 2008, she received the Bachelor's Degree in Electronics Engineering Technology from the UPRB and recognition to the highest overall GPA of this discipline.

Since the fall of 2008, Ms. Villafane is pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering (BSEE) degree with emphasis in Digital Signal Processing (DSP) at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez Campus (UPRM). In January of year 2009, she started working as an undergraduate research assistant at the Automated Information Processing Laboratory at the UPRM under the supervision of Dr. Domingo Rodriguez. During the summer of 2009, she participated in the Maryland Engineering Research Internship Teams (MERIT) program at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland at the Computational Sensorimotor Systems Laboratory under the supervision of Dr. Jonathan Z. Simon. The project which she contributed was entitled "The Neural Representation of Auditory Modulations Relevant to Speech".

Ms. Villafane's professional goals include pursuing a PhD degree in electrical engineering in order to become a research faculty in the future. Her research interests include DSP systems and algorithms applied to emerging medical electronic devices. Besides of her passion about science and engineering, Ms. Villafane loves to play the french horn and the piano. She also participates in activities dedicated to the conservation of our environment, endangered species, and natural resources.