Alejandro Rivera Rivera '12 is one of 54 of the world's most academically exceptional and socially committed young people from 28 countries that have been selected as Gates Cambridge Scholars. He will begin his postgraduate courses at the University of Cambridge this October.
Competition for the Scholarships is fierce. The 54 successful candidates were selected from a total pool of 3,535 applicants on the basis of their intellectual ability, leadership capacity, academic fit with Cambridge, and their commitment to improving the lives of others. Departments in Cambridge nominated candidates for the Scholarships and, of these, 106 were interviewed in Cambridge in late March (in person, by Skype or by telephone) by four panels of interviewers drawn from across the Schools in the University. Forty one of these were for PhDs and 13 for MPhils. The Scholarships were split evenly between genders.
Rivera is the first Gates Cambridge Scholar from Guatemala. He will do an MPhil in Engineering for Sustainable Development. After graduating from Brown University in 2012, he returned to Guatemala where he has been at the forefront of the local green building movement, working as the Engineering and Sustainability Coordinator for an architectural firm, and specializing on the Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design certification program. More recently, intrigued by how the ideas behind green buildings can be extrapolated to entire cities, he co-founded the Guatemalan Network for Sustainable Cities, where he currently serves as Research Director. He says: "I look forward to joining the MPhil in Engineering for Sustainable Development at Cambridge, with the conviction that it will enable me to tackle the ever more complex problems that engineers face in the process of finding sustainable solutions. I hope to use this knowledge to help build better cities in my home country."
- Courtesy of Gates Cambridge
Date
April 20, 2015