After the stages of Lleida, Salamanca, Cádiz and Santander, the Talent Tour, organized by the Princess of Girona Foundation (FPdGi), closed its 2024 activities this Tuesday, in Madrid. In an event, chaired by the King, The last of the awards being announced has been announced, the International, which in the CreaEmpresa category has gone to Susana Arrechea (Guatemala, 1988) and in the Research category, to Yarivith Gonzalez (Argentina, 1988). The award, aimed at young Latin American talents, has been awarded for the first time and is added to the rest of the categories announced in the previous stages of the Talent Tour.
For five months, the Tour, an initiative of the Princess of Girona Foundation, in addition to celebrating various activities aimed at young people, has proclaimed the winners of the different awards that will be awarded next July, in an undetermined location in Girona, in an event presided over by the Kings, the Princess of Asturias and the Infanta Sofía.
The Tour began its journey last January in Lleida, where the CreaEmpresa prize was awarded to the architect Antonio Espinosa de los Monteros; The next stop was in Salamanca where the actress Victoria Luengo was announced as the winner of the Arte award; In Cádiz, the architect Daniel Millor was proclaimed the Social Prize and, in Santander, the Research prize was announced for the plant biologist and geneticist Moisés Expósito.
Susana Arrechea, winner of the International CreaEmprea award, chemical engineer and doctor in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, is co-founder and director of Global Programs of the socially focused company New Sun Road Guatemala, an initiative that emerged at the University of California Berkeley in the United States where she stay with a Fulbright scholarship. Raised in a rural community in the Central American country, the Arrechea company has deployed the so-called Digital Community Centers in areas without access to energy from the national grid.
Thanks to solar energy, electricity is generated to achieve internet connection and help train indigenous women in digital skills, in addition to promoting the education of girls and adolescents in areas such as science, technology and mathematics.
Arrechea, present at the event, encouraged young people to pursue their dreams: “Enjoy, let no one extinguish our enthusiasm for achieving the impossible.”
Yarivith González, who thanked the International Research Award by video from Buenos Aires, is in the final stretch of a doctorate in Chemistry at the University of San Luis in Argentina. Her research focuses on developing methods to recycle and recover metals, such as lithium, manganese or nickel, from lithium-ion batteries from electric vehicles and waste electronic devices.
At the event, the King was accompanied by the Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities, Diana Morant, the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, and the president of the FPdGi, Francisco Belil.
