[3] Her brother, Eugene Santos Jr., became a professor of computer engineering at Dartmouth College.
[2][3] Next, she went to the University of California, Berkeley for graduate study in computer science, earning a master's degree[4] and completing her Ph.D. in 1995 under the supervision of Richard M. Karp.
[5] She became a faculty member at Virginia Tech and at Lehigh University, and a researcher at the Center for Technology and National Security Policy in the US Institute for National Strategic Studies, before moving to the University of Texas at El Paso as chair of the computer science department, director of the National Center for Border Security and Immigration, and director of the Center for Defense Systems Research.
[4] Next, in 2015,[2] she moved to the Illinois Institute of Technology as professor of computer science and Ron Hochsprung Endowed Chair,[4] before serving as dean of the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign from August 2019 until January 2025.
[6] In 2019, she became the inaugural recipient of the IEEE Big Data Security Woman of Achievement Award.