She holds a Ph.D. (cum laude) in Information Science from the same University, awarded in the academic year 2001-02, for her dissertation on Metadata and Digital Libraries. During the academic year 2005-06 she was a Fulbright EU postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Metadata Research Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. Her research focuses on metadata and web standards, digital information systems and services, accessibility and Semantic Web. Dr. Méndez has also served as an independent expert in the evaluation and review of European projects since 2006, both for the eContentPlus program and the ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) program.