Dr. Juan Carlos Rivera

Juan Carlos is a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University in the Peay Lab and at the Nanyang Technological University, NTU-Smithsonian Partnership mentored by Profs. Kabir Peay and David Wardle, respectively. After completing a B.S. degree in agronomy at Zamorano University in Honduras, he directed operations and conducted applied research for 6 years in large-scale farms in Latin America. Then, he received a M.S. from Iowa State University where his research was focused on the assessment of replacing common nitrogen fertilizers by alternative sources like amino acids byproducts for corn production. In 2020, Juan Carlos completed a PhD at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) as a member of the transdisciplinary oil palm adaptive landscape project (OPAL). His PhD research was on the potential for soil C sequestration of alternative land use change trajectories for the expansion of oil palm plantations in the tropics. Between 2020 and 2021, he also completed two Postdoc positions at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH) and Agroscope, the Swiss Institute for Agricultural Research. At Agroscope his work was focus on the interlinks between crop performance, soil and microbes and how their interactions affect soil biochemical aspects like nutrient and C cycling. His broad research interest encompasses feedback of human interventions like agricultural expansion to global climate change and soil ecological processes including microbial functionality and C cycling.