Cinthya Pinetta is a nutritionist, a faculty member of the School of Nutrition of the Faculty of Health Sciences of the Universidad Rafael Landivar and a former research nutritionist at CeSSIAM.  She has performed her thesis studies for a Master’s degree in Applied Nutrition (MANA) at the Universidad de San Carlos of Guatemala on a validation by direct observation validation of a one-day pictorial registry of dietary intake, applied to boarding school children.

Hayda Girón is a recent graduate from the School of Nutrition of the Faculty of Health Sciences of the Universidad Rafael Landivar, supervised in her graduation thesis research on dietary fiber intake in rural and urban adolescents by Licda Liza Hernández, research nutritionist at CeSSIAM.  She graduated Magna cum Laude.

Jennifer Massis-Zea is a recent graduate from the School of Nutrition of the Faculty of Health Sciences of the Universidad Rafael Landivar, supervised in her graduation thesis research on dietary intakes of calcium and vitamin D in urban adolescents by Licda Liza Hernández , research nutritionist at CeSSIAM.  She graduated with cum Laude honors.

Ana Ventura is a student majoring clinical chemistry major in the Faculty of Pharmacy of the Universidad de San Carlos, who did a practical period, with eyes on converting the experience into her graduation thesis on the non-invasive measurement of hemoglobin and the correspondence of whole blood hemoglobin measured by the manual metcyanohemoglobin method and automated cell-counter approach.

María Gabriela Samayoa  is a university student at the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala with a concentration in biochemistry.  She has joined CeSSIAM under the tutelage of CeSSIAM Post-doctoral fellow, Mónica Orozco, to do her community-service elective requirement in a project on screening of preschool children for anemia and her graduation thesis on the mounting and application of analytical methodology for the measurement of serum concentrations of non-transferrin bound iron (NTBI).

María José Soto-Méndez is a research nutritionist at CeSSIAM, who took an 11-month leave of absence at the University of Granada to pursue a Masters in Nutritional Sciences, funded by a stipend from the Hildegard Grunow Foundation.  She had distinguished performance in her course work, and produced a graduation thesis entitled “The effect of a polyphenol-enriched juice on the components of metabolic syndrome in overweight and obese individuals: Dietary interactions.”  She returned to Guatemala and CeSSIAM in October 2011 to continue graduate studies at doctoral level at Granada in a dissertation project related to biological variance of preschool children in semi-rural areas of the Western Highlands.

Gabriela Montenegro-Bethancourt:  Doctoral studies at the University of Bonn, based at the Dortmund Institute for Child Nutrition (FKE), with her doctoral dissertation topic: “Examining the relation between dietary patterns, and urinary biomarkers of Hydration and Iodine Status in Children: Transferring methodological approaches from Germany to Guatemala .”  She is funded by a doctoral fellowship of the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) through the German Embassy in Guatemala.  She took four months of German language training in Goettingen, Germany, from June through August, 2011, prior to enrolling in the University and joining the Institute in Dortmund in October.