Alejandra Paniagua-Avila is a Guatemalan medical doctor and early career scientist dedicated to advancing access to recovery-oriented mental health services for all. She has a particular interest in addressing the health and social needs of people living with serious mental conditions associated with psychosis, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Her research is done in partnership with Maya Indigenous populations and other populations that experience health disparities due to historical discrimination and social exclusion. Her work draws from participatory qualitative approaches, epidemiology, and implementation research to design, implement and evaluate mental health interventions in rural Guatemala and other under-resourced settings. Dr. Paniagua-Avila has published more than 30 peer-reviewed publications and presented research findings at multiple scientific conferences. Her work has been published in high-impact journals, including The Lancet – Regional Health Americas. She is a steering committee member of RedeAmericas, a network of mental health researchers and practitioners across Latin America. She is also a co-founder of Asociación para la Salud Mental, a recently established nonprofit that promotes the recovery of people living with serious mental illnesses in Guatemala through research, capacity strengthening, and program development. She is committed to strengthening research capacity for mental health in Guatemala and has mentored more than 10 students and trainees, many of whom have pursued public health and research careers.

Dr. Cristina Dominguez is a civil engineer from Guatemala whose research and leadership advance sustainable energy access and SDG7 across Latin America and beyond. She pioneered geospatial modelling to forecast rural energy demand, led the development of open-source energy access modelling tools, and has delivered capacity building for policymakers, researchers, community members, women and youth. Cristina is a full member and former Executive Committee Secretary of OWSD Guatemala, committed to bridging science, policy, and community action for access to clean, affordable energy.

Dr Flor de Mayo González Miranda is trying to engineer better landslide prevention for vulnerable areas in Guatemala. Climate change is causing increasingly strong periods of rain in the country, where much of the terrain is rugged. Due to poverty and the lack of governmental and private programs for decent housing, many people live in settlements on the slopes of ravines, where rain and other events make landslides more frequent. Landslides obstruct roads and sometimes bury entire communities.

Dr González Miranda is investigating how a specific grass in the vetiver family, Chrysopogon Zizaniodes, can help to prevent landslides. Through soil tests, X-ray diffraction and other techniques, she has shown how the plants’ roots alter the chemical, physical and mechanical behavior of the soil, reducing the speed of soil infiltration as well as soil plasticity. In addition to this work, Dr. González Miranda has also studied the flow of fresh water into Guatemala’s ports, and the thermal behavior of sand sericite as a precursor to mullite material.

Dr González Miranda earned a certification as a production control technician from Rafael Landivar University in 1986, and a bachelor’s degree  in industrial engineering from San Carlos University in 2002. She holds two master’s degrees in environmental science: from San Carlos University (2008) and Cadiz University in Spain (2009). She has worked as an engineer in various capacities, including as an environmental adviser for the company Superingenieria. In 2019, she earned her PhD in industrial and environmental engineering from the University of Almería, Spain. She is currently a researcher and Lecturer in the School of Industrial Mechanics at San Carlos University.

Dr González Miranda is very active in public outreach, training and awareness raising. She has collaborated with the National Council of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Education of Guatemala on the TIC-STEAM project to provide training in programming, robotics and environmental care to girls in rural areas. She has conducted free trainings for women, youth and community leaders on manufacturing simple products, safety and industrial hygiene, and best practices for manufacturing, among other topics. She has also been interviewed in the newspaper Prensa Libre to provide expert analysis on Guatemala’s multi-million dollar Chimaltenango Bypass, which gave rise to a corruption case related to the project.

Gabriela Montenegro-Bethancourt is a nutritionist and food scientist whose work contributes to strengthen primary health care in rural Guatemala. She works in the most impoverished communities in Guatemala’s to provide health care in Mayan languages and contribute to reducing maternal mortality and child malnutrition, overcoming barriers to the treatment of complex medical conditions, providing optimal care to children and adults with chronic conditions, and promoting access to clean water. Her research is designed to take into consideration nutrition’s broad strategic possibilities, such as empowering women, increasing the availability of nutrient-rich foods, improving access to health services, and design effective policies.

As a Junior Professor in the School of Physical Sciences and Mathematics at University of San Carlos of Guatemala (USAC), Dr María Eugenia Cabrera’s Catalán researches the phenomenology of physics. Her work builds on the discovery of the Higgs boson particle in 2012, expanding the knowledge of what we know about the Standard Model of particle physics and the fundamental forces of nature.

María studies dark matter, the most abundant component of matter in our universe, known only by its gravitational interactions and key to developing a more fundamental theory of nature. She focuses on the interaction between newly discovered particles such as the Higgs boson; understanding these dynamics can help scientists understand the interactions that could be expected between massive weakly coupled dark matter particles in particle collider experiments, or seen by underground detectors that attempt to measure how dark matter interacts with the Earth.

María first became interested in physics in secondary school, thanks to the inspiration of her physics teacher. She majored in physics at USAC, then received a scholarship to pursue a postgraduate diploma at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theo­retical Physics (ICTP) in Italy. There, she became fascinat­ed by high energy physics and made this the focus of her PhD research at the Institute for Theo­retical Physics in Madrid. She graduated Cum Laude in 2011 with the distinction of Doctor Europeus.

Following a postdoctoral position at the GRAPPA Institute at the University of Amsterdam, during a second postdoc at the Institute of Physics at the University of Sao Paolo in 2016, María learned that her alma mater USAC was opening permanent research positions in Physics and Mathematics for the first time, with 75 percent of the time available for research. Six months later she accepted one of these positions. Now, she is working to put her country and region on the world physics map, having helped to organize the first Central American Meeting of High Energy Physics, Cosmology and High Energy Astrophysics in 2020, and dedicating much of her time to supervising and tutoring undergraduate students in particle physics.

Dr. Susana Arrechea’s research is focused on the potential industrial and environmental applications of materials such as nanoparticles, nanotubes, and graphene, which can be employed in creating more sustainable building materials, in water treatment, and in solar devices and other renewable energy solutions. In addition to contributing to the development of nanotechnology in Guatemala, she is also involved in improving solar electrification, connectivity, and digital and STEM literacy in schools in rural Guatemala, in partnership with New Sun Road and Microsoft. Dr. Arrechea received her undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from the University of San Carlos of Guatemala (USAC), and worked there as a professor of physical chemistry before pursuing her master’s degree and doctorate in nanoscience and nanotechnology at the University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain. After graduating Cum Laude, she worked as a visiting researcher at the University of California-Berkeley as part of a Fulbright Nexus project on renewable energy, and later at the Center for Biotechnology Studies of the University of Valle de Guatemala. Her projects have won grants from the National Secretariat of Science and Technology in Guatemala (Senacyt) and The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), among others, and she has received awards including the 2017 “Guatemaltecos Ilustres” Award and a prize for young scientists granted by TWAS, Senacyt and the Academy of Medical, Physical and Natural Sciences of Guatemala. She has been profiled in national magazines, and in 2018 was named one of 50 Defiant Woman in Central America by the magazine Estrategia y Negocios. She is a member of the Academy of Medical, Physical and Natural Sciences of Guatemala, the International Network of Scientists of Guatemala, the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World (OWSD), and of other scientific networks in nanotechnology and energy.