Federico Andrade Rivas Joins the Geography Department as Assistant Professor

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 20:54:51 +0000

Federico Andrade Rivas Joins the Geography Department as Assistant Professor Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 12/08/2025 - 13:54

My path to becoming an Assistant Professor at the Geography department started in Colombia, where I studied environmental engineering and anthropology. After working in a malaria surveillance and climate change adaptation project with nomadic Indigenous populations in the Amazon, I realized that my passion was to understand the complex determinants of human health disparities. Thus, I decided to pursue a Master of Public Health at the University of Cape Town, excited to learn from “South-South” collaborations on chemical contamination issues. The drive to understand human health as deeply intertwined with the natural environment led me to join emergent approaches to human health, such as planetary health, and to pursue a PhD at the University of British Columbia. In Canada, I had the privilege to collaborate in “North-South” partnerships on pollution and globalized food systems, as well as work in solidarity with First Nations and Inuit on the nutritional benefits and contamination issues of traditional food systems.

Currently, my scholarship sits at the intersection of human well-being and the integrity of ecosystems that support life on Earth. I focus on applying a creative combination of geospatial, quantitative, and qualitative research methods to assess contamination issues at global, national, and local scales. I do this while elucidating connections between pollution threats to other planetary health challenges and drivers of health disparities, such as environmental change. I strive to conduct relevant and meaningful research that is genuinely interdisciplinary, collaborative, and focused on solutions and communities’ aspirations beyond solely evaluating damage.

When I am not conducting research or teaching, you can find me rock climbing, brewing coffee, or sharing time with my family.

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Federico Andrade-Rivas

Federico Andrade Rivas Joins the Geography Department as Assistant Professor

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