Esther Orozco

María Esther Orozco Orozco (born 18 April 1945 in San Isidro Pascual Orozco, Chihuahua, Mexico) is a Mexican chemist, bacteriologist, parasitologist and teacher.

Her research in the Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del IPN (México) is focused on the molecular biology and genetics of ''Entamoeba histolytica'', mainly in the genes and proteins that drive the virulence mechanisms of this human parasite, willing to develop a vaccine and more efficient treatments against amoebiasis.

Currently, she is the Minister of International Cooperation in Science and Technology at the Mexican Embassy in France.

She has been honored with the Pasteur Medal, awarded by the Pasteur Institute and the UNESCO, “for her discovery of the mechanism and control of infections by amoebae in the tropics”, and with the L’Oréal UNESCO for Woman in Science Award. She was international fellow of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute for 10 years.

She is a member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences (AMC) and the World Academy of Sciences (TWAS).

In 2011, Esther Orozco was designated Emeritus Researcher by the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute (Spanish: Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politécnico Nacional or CINVESTAV-IPN), where she works since 1981.

In 2012, she was named Emeritus National Researcher by the Conacyt’s National System of Researchers (SNI). Up to 2022, there are only 462 members of the SNI (102 of them women) with this distinction of emeritus within the roster of 36,714 Mexican researchers members of the SNI.

She has also been recognized by the Congress of Chihuahua, where she was born, and by the Assembly of Mexico City. Provided by Wikipedia