National Awards 2012 stay again at the CRUCH

Two graduates and three academics from institutions of the Council of Rectors received awards this year in Literature, Musical Arts, History, Natural Sciences and Applied and Technological Sciences.

As has become customary in Chile, most national awards, with very few exceptions, belong in some way to the universities of the Council of Rectors, either as academics or students, contributing in many cases to their educational institutions with research and essential contributions to the formation of knowledge that benefit both the universities and the development of the country.

This year, 2012, was no exception, and the awards were given, as is customary, to alumni or current faculty members of the universities belonging to the Council of Rectors. In Literature, the award went to the poet Oscar Hahn, who earned his degree in Spanish from the University of Chile, Arica campus, now the University of Tarapacá. In Musical Arts, the renowned conductor and founder of the Philharmonic Orchestra, Juan Pablo Izquierdo, was the winner. He also completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Chile, where he studied composition.

The other three awards presented this year went to academics from CRUCH universities. The History award was given to Jorge Pinto Rodríguez, an academic from the University of La Frontera; the Natural Sciences award to Bernabé Santelices, a biologist and professor at the Catholic University of Chile; and the Applied and Technological Sciences award to Ricardo Uauy-Dagach, an academic from the University of Chile recognized for his extensive career as head of the Institute of Nutrition and Food Technology (INTA) at the University of Chile.

Throughout the years in the history of the national awards, the list is long and the names that are added are endless, increasing the pride of being part, as the Council of Rectors, of the genesis and subsequent development of the best creators and researchers that the country has and has had, contributing in a transcendent way to the national culture in the development of their specific fields and with the objective of increasing the cultural heritage of the country and inserting Chile into the Knowledge Society.

Although naming them all would be impossible, some notable recent examples include, for instance, in Journalism, Juan Pablo Cárdenas (2005), Faride Zerán (2007), María Olivia Monckeberg (2009), and Sergio Campos (2011), all distinguished academics at the Institute of Communication and Image at the University of Chile. In Education, there are the prominent academics from the Catholic University of Chile, Erika Himmel König (2011) and Mabel Condemarín (2003), and Professor Mario Leyton Soto (2009) of the Master's Program in Education at the University of Santiago (USACH). In Applied Sciences and Technologies, Fernando Monckeberg Barros (1998), Chilean surgeon, Doctor of Medicine specializing in nutrition, professor, researcher and economist at the University of Chile and creator of the Institute of Nutrition and Food Technology of the University of Chile (INTA) or the academic José Miguel Aguilera (2008), full professor of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Bioprocesses of the UC since 1986, and current president of the National Commission of Scientific and Technological Research (CONICYT).