The workshop WAIFI 2024 takes place in Ottawa, Canada, during June 10-12 2024. This event is a forum of mathematicians, computer scientists, engineers and physicists performing research on finite field arithmetic, interested in communicating the advances in the theory, applications, and implementations of finite fields. Maria participates as invited plenary speaker to the event, giving the talk “Algebraic curves over finite fields: rational points and birational invariants”.