In 2020, she was awarded the 29th Eugenio Espejo National Prize for her lifelong contribution to science in Ecuador.
She did a fellowship in Tropical Biology at the University of Aarhus, and completed her PhD with funding from the Danish government.
In 2002 she obtained a postdoctoral fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to conduct research at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich.
She has taught at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador for more than 20 years, where she is also curator and director of the QCA Herbarium.
She was the first Ecuadorian researcher to publish the complete taxonomic treatment of the Rosaceae plant family.