Dr. Alcantar is a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering & Biomedical Engineering at the University of South Florida. She received her Ph.D. degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of California-Santa Barbara (UCSB) in 2000. She did her postdoctoral research in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at UC Davis and UCSB from 2000 to 2001 in Surface Properties of Thin Films under Confinement. She then worked in the Materials Research Laboratory at UCSB in Surface Characterization and Interfacial Phenomena of Thin Films from 2001 to 2003. Dr. Alcantar is an expert in surface force measurements, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Her research interests include Interfacial Phenomena and chemical characterization of biomimetic membranes, drug delivery systems, micellar surfactants, green chemistry materials, water purification systems, nanoparticles and organic/inorganic thin films. Dr. Alcantar was inducted in the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame in 2021. She is a member-elect of the Engineering Section Steering Committee of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2018-2022). She was the recipient of a 2016-2017 Core Fulbright Award and the 2018 Summer Faculty fellowship from the Jewish National Fund. She was also awarded the USF Excellence in Innovation Award in 2016. She is a departmental Director for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Minority Scholars Program to advancing underrepresented minority students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, since 2005. She is also co-director of the Water, Health and Sustainability Graduate Certificate and the Director of the Materials Science and Engineering Graduate Certificate. Dr. Alcantar is also the recipient of the 2010 Hispanic Pathways Award. She has presented numerous invited oral presentations nationally and internationally (e.g., Bangladesh, Haiti, Mexico, Chile, Germany, Costa Rica, and Puerto Rico), has 22 patents, and has over 50 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters.