Vania Castro is a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Department of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She previously held the Werner Baer Post-Doctoral Position at the Lemann Center for Brazilian Studies at the University of Illinois from 2022 to 2023. She developed an innovative framework to support Brazilian teachers in implementing the new curriculum standards at schools. Dr. Castro completed her Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil, in May 2021. She was a visiting scholar with the CAPES/PrInt program at UIUC in 2019 and 2020 where she developed part of her doctoral studies. Her investigation centered on leveraging mobile devices to provide support to educators and students in underserved regions of Brazil. She was also a Fulbright scholar at Florida State University (FSU) from 2015-2016. Her current research interests include emerging technologies in education, mobile learning, multiliteracies, teacher education, and artificial intelligence.