Edwin Melendez is a Professor of Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College and the Director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies. He has conducted considerable research in the areas of Latino studies, economic development, labor markets, and poverty. In addition to numerous scientific papers and other publications, he is the co-editor of the recently published Latinos in a Changing Society (Praeger, 2007)

Yasmin Ramirez, Ph.D., is a research associate at the Centro de Estudios Puertorriquenos, Hunter College New York. She earned her Ph.D. in Art History from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 2005 with a dissertation entitled: "Nuyorican Vanguards: Political Actions / Poetic Visions, A History of Puerto Rican artists in New York, 1964-1984." Dr. Ramirez is currently writing a book based on her dissertation for  Notre Dame University Press. 

Carlos Vargas-Ramos is Centro's public policy researcher and author of three of its policy papers: Settlement Patterns and Residential Segregation of Puerto Ricans in the United States", "The State of Housing for Hispanics in the United States" and "Housing Emergency and Overcrowding: Latinos in New York City”.

Luis O. Reyes is a Research Associate at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies/Centro De Estudios Puertorriqueños of Hunter College, CUNY. He served as Assistant Professor in the Middle and High School Department at Lehman College, CUNY, in Fall 2008 and as a Visiting Fellow in the Bronx Institute at Lehman College, CUNY, from 2004 to 2008.

Patricia Silver Centro Research Associate Patricia Silver is a cultural anthropologist whose research in Puerto Rico and on the diaspora focuses on education systems and state formation; relocation and community formation; oral history and social memory; race, class, gender, and nation; locally specific historical political economies; and neoliberalism and transnationalism.

 M. Anne Visser is a Research Assistant at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College (CUNY). Ms. Visser’s research interests focus on social and economic inequality in the context of the informal economy and low wage labor markets. Specifically, she researches the role of state, community, non-profit and private actors in promoting urban economic and social equality.

IRIS ZAVALA MARTINEZ Distinguished Lecturer and new faculty member Dr. Iris Zavala Martínez brings to Centro a wealth of experience on Puerto Rican psychosocial health, including involvement in the clinical, academic and programmatic aspects of her field, both on the island and the mainland.