Alejandro Rivera Rivera - first Gates Cambridge Scholar from Guatemala.

Alejandro Rivera 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 specialising on the Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design certification programme. 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.”