While pursuing an undergraduate and graduate degree in Civil Engineering at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez, she assisted CARICOOS and Sea Grant Puerto Rico in understanding the hydrodynamics and sediment transport processes in coastal areas through data collection and the use of high-resolution morphodynamic models. Patricia completed a Ph.D. in Coastal Engineering at the University of Delaware. She currently serves as Deputy and Technical Director of CARICOOS and is a researcher at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez. As director, she supervises all technical and administrative aspects of CARICOOS, including numerical modeling and observational efforts. As a researcher, she combines field and numerical modeling research to enhance our understanding of nearshore and coastal morphodynamics and nearshore-water-land interactions.