When she reached 8th grade, she was given a class assignment to study the moon which required her to spend time on the roof of her house every night for a month.

[1] After she graduated from high school, she applied and was accepted to the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez.

In 1993, Martinez earned her Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering and was offered a job at NASA.

[1] Martinez was part of the team that launched a rocket from White Sands, New Mexico to gather information on the Comet Hale–Bopp in 1999.

[2] She is responsible for providing electrical engineering support to Code 870 Space Experiment Module (SEM) program.