STEM Shoutout: Dr. Soraya Abad-Mota

Database expert hired by UNM computer science

Dr. Soraya Abad-Mota recently was hired full time hire in UNM’s Department of Computer Science. She will lead computer programming courses and systems courses, along with the an elective course on databases in Spring 2018 and the CS capstone, a software development program required for students to graduate.

Abad-Mota worked at Universidad Simón Bolívar (USB) in Caracas, Venezuela for 25 years. She created and taught advanced classes on Databases for undergraduate and graduate programs in computer science at USB.. Additionally, she founded the Database Lab (BWL), funded by the InterAmerican Development Bank. After the economic, political and social collapse of Venezuela in 2013, Abad-Mota relocated to New Mexico and has taught several courses at UNM before being hired full-time.

“My area of expertise is databases. I am interested in the full spectrum of topics related to the area. From data modeling and design of databases to database administration. I am also interested in the interaction between Artificial Intelligence (AI)  and Databases (DB), which is currently on high demand with the proliferation of data sources available on the web,” Abad-Mota said.

Abad-Mota’s BWL Lab in Venezuela had aided in the education of several professionals who have gone on to work in some of Venezuela’s top companies, such as Oracle, IBM, Sybase, MS, Digital, and Sun Microsystems.

“My goals with this second career at UNM are to help the CS Department. serve the students (CS and non-CS majors) with high-quality teaching. I will start looking for grant opportunities to build an interdisciplinary lab at UNM which explores and expands the interactions between Databases and AI to continue taking advantage of the information resources available on the web,” Abad-Mota said.