​Born and raised in Mexico. In 2018 Irene graduated from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) with Honors in her Bachelor’s Degree on Environmental Sciences in the deepening area “Management of Socio-Ecological Systems”. She started to venture into the world of marine science halfway through her undergrad studies collaborating in research internships with the Institute of Marine Sciences and Limnology-UNAM and the Autonomous University of Baja California Sur (UABCS), where she found the ideal place to pursue her thesis project. Irene was part of the Reef Systems Lab at UABCS for 3 years. In 2017 she worked at the Cabo Pulmo National Park as the project technician in charge of the Coral Restoration Pilot Program and also assisted on reef monitoring with fish, invertebrate and substrate ID. Later she collaborated with Niparajá A.C. as a marine monitoring technician at the San Cosme-Punta Coyote Corridor of fisheries refuge zones in the Gulf of California. Later, she cofounded and is now a member of the Eastern Tropical Pacific Coral Restoration Network.

Irene is interested in researching interactions between human and marine ecosystems, and novel scientific approaches to understand the changes reefs are undergoing due to global change, aiming to apply this in management and conservation.