I hold a BSc. in Nutrition from Universidad Rafael Landívar in Guatemala. After that, I was granted a full scholarship to pursue a double degree with the Erasmus Mundus Program, where I obtained a MSc. in Food in Science and Food Technology from Universitè de Montpellier, France and and MSc. in Sustainable Management of Food Quality granted by the Centre for Advanced Agronomic Mediterranean Studies (CIHEAM) in Zaragoza, Spain.
Currently, I am enrolled in the last year of a PhD program in Biotechnology, with specialization in Food Science and Engineering at Universidade Católica Portuguesa.
My project, under the name “LEGUMES: Evaluating nutritional resilience and product sustainability towards healthy diets", focuses on understanding the impact that the environment can exert over the nutritional quality of legumes and how the best performing genotypes can be included into the current European agri-food systems. During this period I have optimised methods for nutritional quality determination, employing infra-red technlogies and flow based systems, along with the creation of several legume-based food products and recipe books to promote the consumption of pulses, mainly fava beans.