Pedro J. J. Alvarez

Pedro J.J. Alvarez is the George R. Brown Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rice University, where he also serves as Director of the National Science Foundation-sponsored Engineering Research Center on Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment (NEWT).

Born in 1958 in Masaya, Nicaragua, Alvarez received a Jesuit pre-college education at Colegio Centroamerica in Granada, Nicaragua, Externado de San Jose in San Salvador, El Salvador and Colegio del Salvador in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  After graduating from high school at Colegio Centroamerica in Managua, Alvarez obtained a B. Eng. Degree in Civil Engineering from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He then worked at Tetra Tech in Southern California as a project engineer conducting environmental impact studies before attending graduate school at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he obtained MS. and Ph.D. degrees in Environmental Engineering as a Rackham Fellow. His academic career started at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, where he also served as Associate Director for the Center for Biotechnology and Bioprocessing. 

Alvarez has served on the EPA’s Science Advisory Board and the National Science Foundation Engineering Directorate Advisory Committee, and as Associate Editor of Environmental Science and Technology.

Alvarez is an honorary professor at Nankai University, Zheijang University, and Chinese Academy of Sciences, and adjunct professor at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina in Florianopolis, Brazil.