A passion for something new
Pedro Alvarez joins ES&T as an associate editor in January.
Pedro Alvarez, an environmental engineer at Rice University, will be bringing his broad experience and worldly view to ES&T when he becomes an associate editor in January.
Now teaching courses in environmental engineering and biotechnology, including wastewater treatment and bioremediation, Alvarez chairs the civil and environmental engineering department at Rice. He recently completed his tenure as president of the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors and relinquished editorial positions at European Journal of Soil Biology and ASCE Journal of Environmental Engineering to join ES&T. He plans to do less consulting, something he has done around the world, including as an honorary consul to Nicaragua, where he was born.
In his ever-changing career, Alvarez has worked on assessing the risks of nanotechnology as well as on bioremediation and phytoremediation for environmental cleanup. He is currently pursuing ideas on how environmental nanoscience and environmental engineering might be tweaked for biomedical uses. “I like targeting emerging problems,” he says. “Once you see a solution and a clear path, it’s no longer as intellectually stimulating.”
“What Pedro tends to do,” says Joseph Hughes of Georgia Institute of Technology, a close friend and collaborator, is to work “on the edge of discovery rather than refinement. A good example is the work that both of us are doing at this nanotechnology center. It’s really not traditional for an engineer to be considering [new technology] at this stage of development.” Hughes and Alvarez colead the Rice University Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology, one of more than a dozen such academic centers across the U.S. funded by the National Science Foundation.
Alvarez is “somebody who enjoys learning,” Hughes says, and because he is extroverted and outgoing, Alvarez seeks out research partnerships. “As you develop collaboration, it pulls you into new areas,” Hughes comments.
Just as Alvarez’s interests continue to be international in scope—for example, in consulting pro bono for water treatment plants and other programs in Nicaragua—he says that environmental scientists “need international partners” to make sure that “science will be a key player [and that] scientists provide input to key decision makers. We need to be louder.” He feels strongly that scientists in developed countries need to find ways to “penetrate” the policy-making process, but he admits, “I don’t know how.”
This arena could be one in which ES&T makes a difference, Alvarez says, particularly in ensuring that the journal remains international in scope, with regard to both its science and its authors. Alvarez feels strongly that scientists in developing countries deserve guidance and encouragement and that ES&T is in a unique position to do that.
“We need to start thinking about the environment in systems much larger than national boundaries,” Alvarez says. “In order to do that, we need to understand the context of research being done in other parts of the world.”
