Dr. Martha Ramírez-Valdivia is a professor, researcher, and consultant.She earned her Industrial Engineering degree from Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería, Nicaragua, her M.Sc. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Missouri-Columbia, USA, and her Ph.D. from Pontificia Universidad Católica, Chile. Her main areas of research are related to quality management, efficiency measurement, process improvement, and simulation. She is currently appointed as Associate Professor at the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. She serves as Vice-president for the Central and South America Region of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineering and member of the Melton Foundation Board of Directors. She is an active member of ASQ and IIE. She has authored several articles, and book chapters and participated as a researcher and co-researcher in several R&D projects in Chile, Nicaragua, and the US. In the past, she has served as Director of Quality, Director of the International Affairs Office, UFRO Campus Coordinator of the Melton Foundation, Director of the Undergraduate Program in Industrial Engineering and of the Graduate Program of Master in Integrated Quality Systems Management at Universidad de La Frontera. She also served as President of the International Committee for the Council of Rectors of Chilean Universities, Member of the Integrated Work Table for designing accreditation criteria and standards related to Quality Assurance-Higher Education.In the USA, she worked as Project Engineer at the Enterprise Systems Center in Lehigh University, Pennsylvania; in Nicaragua, she served as a full professor at Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería, consultant for the Bolivar Program for Small Companies, and consultant for the Central American Bank for Integration, and National Director of Quality Control at the Ministry of Economy and Development. Former Fulbright-LASPAU, DAAD, CONICYT-Chile and OAS scholar.