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Costa Rican Faculty and Staff at Rice


 

Anthony Várilly-Alvarado

Prof. Varilly-Alvarado was born and raised in Costa Rica, where he attended the British School of Costa Rica and completed the International Baccalaureate program.  After High School, he came to the Unites States, where he studied Mathematics at Harvard University.  He spent a year at the University of Cambridge, in Emmanuel College, where he completed Part III of the Mathematical Tripos, before moving back to the United States to get his Ph. D. in Mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley, under the supervision of Bjorn Poonen.  In 2009 he came to Rice University as a G. C. Evans Instructor.  He has been here since then, having been appointed Assistant Professor in 2012, and most recently Associate Professor in 2016.  He has spent time as an academic visitor at the Universite de Rennes 1 and the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne.

Prof. Varilly-Alvarado’s research is centered on the study of solutions to systems of polynomial equations whose coordinates involve only rational numbers (like 19, or -3/5).  He specializes on systems whose geometric avatars consist of surfaces over the complex numbers, especially K3 surfaces.  Such surfaces have an incredibly rich geometry, which bears on their rational points in ways that we are still trying to understand.

On June 2018, Professor Varilly-Alvarado has received the George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching for the second time. The award honors top Rice professors as determined by the votes of alumni who graduated within the past two, three and five years. More from the Rice News.


 

Carlos Jiménez

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Carlos Jimenez, Professor of Architecture

He was born in San Jose, Costa Rica (l959) and moved to the United States in l974. Jimenez graduated from the University of Houston School of Architecture in l981, receiving awards for best thesis project and best portfolio. He established his own office in Houston in l983. He was a visiting professor at Rice University (l987, l994), Texas A & M University (l987, l989), Southern California Institute of Architecture (l990, l991),  U.C.L.A. (1990), University of Texas at Arlington (l990-l996), University of Houston (l991, l994), Williams College (l994), University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain (l995, 2002, 2011), Harvard University Graduate School of Design (l996, l997), Tulane University (l996), University of Texas at Austin (l997, 2004),  University of California, Berkeley (l999), University of Oregon (2000).

He is also a Lecturer, Juror and Visiting Critic at universities and cultural institutions throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean , Central and South America, Europe, the Middle East and Japan.  Jimenez is now a tenured Professor at Rice University School of Architecture since the year 2000 and a Jury member of the Pritzker Architecture Prize (2001-2011).

   

 


 

Erika de la Garza

Erika de la Garza, Program Director of the Latin America Initiative at the Baker Institute

Erika de la Garza is the program director of the Latin America Initiative at the Baker Institute. Her chief areas of interest include U.S.-Latin America relations; emerging leadership; coalition building between public, private and civil society actors; and trade and business development in Latin America.

She oversees research on current events facing the region, especially relating to economic development, politics and institution building. She also organizes lectures and other programs to increase awareness about Latin America and to foster a better understanding between the countries of this hemisphere. Prior to joining the institute, she worked for several years encouraging foreign direct investment in Costa Rica, her home country.

She holds a master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University in New York and a master’s degree in diplomacy from the University of Costa Rica.