Dr. Ivelisse M. Rubio was born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mathematics from the University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras and a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Cornell University. Her research interests are applications of computational algebra, finite fields and coding theory.

Dr. Rubio was a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Puerto Rico-Humacao until July, 2007. She has directed undergraduate research projects in computational mathematics or coding theory of over fifteen minority students that resulted in numerous presentations and publications in undergraduate forums. Professor Rubio has been involved in many activities to promote minority undergraduate students to graduate studies. In 1998, her first year at the UPR, Humacao campus, she co-founded, together with Herbert Medina, the recognized REU Summer Institute in Mathematics for Undergraduates (SIMU). She is now one of the Co-directors of the undergraduate research program at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) in Berkeley, MSRI-UP.

In 2006 SIMU received the American Mathematical Society’s award to “Programs that make a difference”, being this the first time that this award was given by the AMS. For her work related to the mathematics activities at SACNAS conference she and Ricardo Cortez received a 2006 SACNAS Presidential Service Award. Since July 2007 she has been a professor in the Computer Science Department of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras.