Martha Giraldo graduated with a degree in Biology with an emphasis in Genetics from the Universidad del Valle, in 1996. She worked as a Research Assistant at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and has experience in the application of molecular tools to characterize the genetic diversity of genebank collections of food crops and to study plant-microbe interactions. Dr. Giraldo obtained her doctoral degree from the Department of Plant Pathology at Kansas State University (KSU) in December 2010 and completed her postdoctoral training in Molecular Fungal-Plant Interactions in 2014 at KSU. She is Assistant Professor in the Department of Agro- Environmental Sciences at the University of Puerto Rico since 2014. Her motivation is to understand how the pathogen manipulates plant defenses to establish the disease, that leads us to generate information required to develop effective strategies to achieve durable and broad disease control in staple crops. Dr. Giraldo is a Co-Project Director of the ECaFSS Project, her role is to train middle and high school students of the PR’s public education system in disciplines related to food security, food safety, agricultural biotechnology and natural resources, through hands-on activities and learning workshop experiences. (martha.giraldo@upr.edu)