Moises Carreon, Mexican Engineer, To Receive Honor From Obama Administration

El Universal reports that Moisés Carreón, a 39-year-old assistant professor at the University of Louisville and native of Morelia, Mexico, has been named among 102 researchers to receive the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government for early-career achievement in science and engineering. Carreón, who received a BA and MS from the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo before coming to the United States for a PhD in chemical engineering at the University of Cincinnati, told El Universal he felt “very lucky because I know there are [other] researchers who deserve this prize”.

The White House says the awards “embody the high priority the Obama Administration places on producing outstanding scientists and engineers to advance the Nation’s goals, tackle grand challenges, and contribute to the American economy.” La Opinion notes that the University of Louisville professor is the second Mexican chemist to be honored by President Barack Obama in less than a year -- Mario Molina, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Nov. 20.

According to the website of the Kentucky Leadership and Entrepreneurship Conference, a conference for scientists in the state, Carreón specializes in the “rational design of porous crystals." He joined the faculty of the Chemical Engineering Department at University of Louisville in 2007 after stints as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto and a research associate at the University of Colorado-Boulder. The White House has no date as of yet for the award ceremony, though the president will be on hand to give out the prizes.