Kathy Vivas has been Awarded the Premio Fundacion Polar Lorenzo Mendoza Fleury Prize

 

Kathy Vivas, who received her Ph.D. here in 2002, has been awarded the Premio Fundacion Polar Lorenzo Mendoza Fleury prize for her work on the RR Lyrae Variables and the Substructure in the Galactic Halo. It is the top physics prize in Venezuela.

Premio Fundación Empresas Polar "Lorenzo Mendoza Fleury”
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Five Venezuelan scientists have been awarded with the "Lorenzo Mendoza Fleury" award by the Venezuelan Polar Foundation as a recognition for their contributions to science.

Four women and one man received with enthusiasm and surprise the news that they were chosen for the 14th edition of this award, which is one of the most prestigious in the Venezuelan scientific community.The official ceremony for the XIV Premio Fundación Empresas Polar “Lorenzo Mendoza Fleury” is scheduled for the first week of June 2009. Mireya Rincón de Goldwasser (Chemistry), Estefanía Marcantognini (Mathematics), Flor Pujol (Biology), Anna Katherina Vivas (Astrophysics) and Juan De Sanctis (Biochemistry) are the five Venezuelan researchers who will receive the award.

Yesterday they got the news directly from Mrs. Leonor Giménez de Mendoza, president of the Polar Foundation, who before the media and members of the Foundation, called them by phone and told them the good news. Surprise, joy, and much emotion was heard in the voices of these scientists who are being honored with one of the most important prizes in the country. The award is a public acknowledgement of their talent, creativity and productivity, and includes a certificate and Bs.F. 40,000 ($18,000) to each winner.

For the first time in history, four out the five winners are women, something that Mrs. Leonor Giménez de Mendoza could not avoid to highlight, praising the contribution of female scientists in the development of the country. Dr. Mireya Rincón de Goldwasser has pionereed the use of heterogeneus basic catalists in organic synthesis. Dr. Estefanía Marcantognini has developed research on Operator Theory, while Dr. Flor Pujol has focused her work on several viruses associated to Hepatitis, being the first one to detect the Hepatitis E virus. In Astrophysics, Dr. Anna Katherina Vivas has discovered more than a hundred of RR-Lyrae stars, which have provided information to map stellar streams in the Milky Way's halo. The only man in the group, Dr. Juan De Sanctis, is recognized for his work on immunology response in allergies and Hepatitis C.

The members of the Award Selection Committee include scientists and previous winners of the "Lorenzo Mendoza Fleury" award. This year, the members were Alejandro Arce, Anamaría Font (Premio Lorenzo Mendoza Fleury, 1991), Teresita Iturriaga, José Rafael Leon (Premio Lorenzo Mendoza Fleury, 1997), Ferdinando Liprandi (Premio Lorenzo Mendoza Fleury, 1995), Antonio Machado and Wilmer Olivares (Premio Lorenzo Mendoza Fleury, 1999).

Renato Valdivieso, chairman of the Premio Fundación Empresas Polar “Lorenzo Mendoza Fleury”,
expressed that with this award, Polar Corporation and its Foundation are supporting the work of the innovative, creative and productive scientists, given them resources that allow them to continue and improve their research, acknowledging their achievements. The winners are now members of the select group of awarded scientists, to whom the Polar Foundation will provide support for their academic activities in the country and abroad.

27 years acknowledging the Venezuelan Scientific research
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Since 1982, the Premio Fundación Empresas Polar Lorenzo Mendoza Fleury has been awarded to 70 Venezuelans, whose talent and creativity have made of them genuine contributors to the universal knowledge. "The 14 editions of the award are proof of the confidence we have in the potential of our scientific community", has said Mrs. Leonor Giménez de Mendoza.

The president of the Polar Foundation indicated that for the Polar Corporation "It is a pleasure to once again recognize the merit of those who dedicate their lives to take science one step ahead, that is one step forward in the evolution of humankind. The Premio Fundación Empresas Polar “Lorenzo Mendoza Fleury” is a motivation to continue the good work, especially for the young people who are starting the hard but enlightening task of science."

On other the hand, Lorenzo Mendoza, chairman of Polar Corporation, explained how science and technology have always been of interest for the company, as part of their policy of long term social involvement with Venezuela, its people and the community. Lorenzo Mendoza said that the effort involved in giving this award every two years, results finally in a contribution to the development of Venezuelans, strenghtening science and technology as pillars of the generation of knowledge as a service to society.

As of today, the winners by specialty are divided as follow: 25 biologists, 17 physicists, 15 mathematicians and 13 chemists, from which 61 have been male and 9 female.

The winners come from different universities and research institutes from all over the country, 27 from Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas (IVIC), 9 from Universidad Simón Bolívar (USB), 15 from Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV), 10 from Universidad de Los Andes (ULA), 3 from Centro de Investigaciones de Astronomía (CIDA), 1 from IBM, 1 from Universidad de Carabobo (UC), 1 from INTEVEP, 1 from La Universidad del Zulia (LUZ), 1 from Universidad de Oriente (UDO) and 1 from Instituto de Estudios Avanzados (IDEA).


Dr. Anna Katherina Vivas
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Born in Tovar, Merida state, she is 37 years old. Graduated from Universidad de los Andes (ULA) with a BS in Physics (Cum Laude), she pursued her PhD studies at Yale University (USA) and got her doctorate degree in 2002. She currently works as a researcher at CIDA and has published more than 20 refereed papers that have been cited more than 450 times according to the Astrophysics Data System/NASA. She is recognized for her work on the RR-Lyrae Survey with the QUEST project, a joint initiative of ULA, CIDA and Yale to upgrade the 1.5 mt Schmidt camera located in the Llano del Hato Observatory, to perform a sky survey looking for quasars.

Among her investigations results, we can cite the discovery of more than 100 RR-Lyrae stars that have allowed the mapping of stellar streams that run through the halo of our Galaxy, the Milky Way. In 2006, astronomers from Princeton University (USA) showed evidence of what is known now as the Virgo overdensity, which confirmed the hypothesis previously supported by Vivas' results about cannibalism processes of dwarf galaxies by the Milky Way. Dr. Vivas is considered an expert in RR-Lyraes and is cited as a reference in the field. She teaches grad level astrophysics courses for the Physics program of ULA.

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Article taken from CIDA's web page, www.cida.ve
Translation by Kathy Vieira.