Associate Professor Milagros (Millie) Rivera is the chair of the Communications and New Media Program at the National University of Singapore. From 1993 to 1999 she was an assistant professor in the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida, U.S.A. She was tenured and promoted to associate professor in 1999. In 2000 she became a tenured associate professor in the Department of Telecommunications at Indiana University, U.S.A.  Dr. Rivera accepted a visiting fellowship with the Communications and New Media Program at the National University of Singapore in July 2002 and became the program's chair in 2004.

After becoming CNM’s chair, Dr. Rivera obtained a SGD$1.6 million grant to add a stream in communication management (public relations) and another in interactive media (game & visual design and human-computer interaction) to CNM and led the revision of the department’s curriculum, which resulted in more than 30 new courses over three years. She also hired a diverse and multidisciplinary group of faculty members from more than 15 countries in areas like computing, human computer interaction, engineering, game and visual design, communications, public relations, social psychology, cognitive psychology, anthropology and digital/traditional arts.

Under her leadership CNM has become the third largest department in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the National University of Singapore and has received more than 10 teaching awards in the past three years. Dr. Rivera has also mobilized undergraduate students to become organized as a student society, promoted the creation of an internship program for undergraduate students and liaised with professional organizations, such as the Institute of Public Relations of Singapore, to promote student membership. She also created an Industry Advisory Council that provides internships for students and actively supports activities for undergraduate students.

Teaching areas: Regulation of information and communication technologies (ICTs), new media and society, internet regulation, computer/ICT-related crime and governance of ICTs.

Current research: Regulatory efficiency, ICT comparative policy, online privacy, e-government and information and communication technologies and development (ICT&D).  Her research interest centers in the Asia Pacific Region.

Her work has been published in New Media and Society, Journalism and Mass Communication Monographs, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Journalism History, The Urban Lawyer, Hastings Communications and Entertainment Law Journal, Federal Communications Law Journal, World Internet Law Report, Communications and the Law, Cuadernos de Información (a Chilean academic journal), Asian Pacific Law and Policy Journal, Media Asia and Asian Journal of Communication. From 1999 to 2003, she was the author of the broadcast regulation chapter in Communication and the Law, a media law book published by Vision Press, U.S.A. She is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Communication Law and Policy (U.S.A.) and Digital Review of Asia Pacific, a bi-yearly publication that reviews ICT4D in the Asia Pacific region.