Diana Berenice López Tavares

Diana is passionate about advancing STEM learning for students in Latin America and throughout the world by bringing the highest-quality, equitable STEM education, supporting teacher professional development programs and the design of contextualized teaching materials.

Diana is a physicist with a Ph.D. in Physics Education Research. She has been working in STEM education for over 10 years, and currently serves as the Latin American Specialist with the PhET Interactive Simulation project at the University of Colorado Boulder. PhET develops free high-quality simulations and virtual labs to support students in developing conceptual knowledge and STEM skills. Her responsibilities include supporting users of the PhET resources, building collaborations with universities and other organizations throughout Latin America, and supporting projects to engage teachers and students in developing STEM knowledge and skills. Throughout the COVID pandemic, she has designed and facilitated online courses, MOOCs, and virtual teaching activities to help science and math teachers continue with their classes remotely.

She has also participated in various national and international educational projects and research.  Her Ph.D. research focused on the design of a teacher dashboard using Learning Analytics methodologies to display valuable information that informs teachers to improve their instruction. She has also worked in qualitative analysis, examining the argumentation process of elementary school students while they participate doing experiments in science classes.