Raquel is  Professor in the Department of Statistics at the Baskin School of Engineering, UCSC, where she has been on the faculty since 2001. In 1998 she graduated with a PhD in Statistics and Decision Sciences from Duke University. From 1998 until 2001 she was an Assistant Professor in Statistics at Universidad Simon Bolivar in Venezuela. She was a co-recepient  of the Outstanding Statistical Application Award of the American Statistical Association in 1999. She is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. She is also a Fellow and Past President of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis. Raquel is also a member of the Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics (CATS) of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine.