The Interciencia awards/Los premios Interciencia/ Os premios Interciencia.(EDITORIAL)(Editorial)

The recognition to the work and the career of researchers acquires a special value when it is decided and conferred by the scientific community. It is even more so in our region, where the majority of important awards are given to scientists and technologists by official institutions. It is due to its origin in the community of researchers of the Americas that the Interciencia Awards, already in their third consecutive year, have acquired a particular and indisputable relevance. The Interciencia Association, which gathers since 1974 the Associations for the Advancement of Science of the Americas, established in 2004 two awards to be bestowed annually upon outstanding researchers in various fields of science and technology. This initiative was possible thanks to generous contributions from the Government of Canada and the Canadian enterprise Hydro-Quebec, in collaboration with the Association Francophone pour le Savoir (ACFAS), corresponding Canadian member of the Interciencia Association.

The government of Canada established a fund, to be administered by ACFAS, to finance the concession of an annual prize to be bestowed upon researchers who have made outstanding contributions to the advancement of science and engineering in Latin American and Caribbean countries, corresponding to the fields of Life Sciences and of Ecology and Biodiversity.

Hydro-Quebec, on the other hand, finances directly the granting of an annual prize aimed to recognize outstanding contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of Energy and Environment in South Cone countries, which is granted in alternate years in each of these two specialties.

In its first edition the Interciencia …