As the university system that has produced (by far) the largest number of Hispanic/Latinx STEM PhDs in the U.S., the University of Puerto Rico is one of the most important scientific institutions for assuring a diverse and well-trained STEM workforce. The contributions of the UPR to education and research impact Puerto Rico's economy, culture, and social well-being. This is why we share this letter from the Alliance for Science in the UPR addressed to Judge Swain and a call to our community to show its support for the UPR and its concern about the impact of budget cuts.

"The Medical Sciences Campus congratulates Dr. Emma Fernández-Repollet for being the recipient of the“ Faces of Bioscience in Puerto Rico 2021 ”award. Ciencia Puerto Rico joins the congratulations of this scientific leader. Dr. Emma Fernández Repollet She is Professor at the School of Medicine and Director of the Collaborative Center on Health Disparities at the Medical Sciences Campus. The distinction was awarded by the Puerto Rico Bio Alliance as part of the Annual Bioscience Celebration at the official ceremony and commemorative events. of the Celebration of Bioscience Month 2021. These events were held on October 12, 2021 at the Jaime Benitez-Rexach Amphitheater of the University of PR Medical Sciences Campus.

During the month of September our team welcomed three new members: Alondra Caraballo Franco and Ariadna Rubio Lebrón, both fellows of the PARACa-AmeriCrops program of Mentes Puertorriqueñas en Acción and Andrea López Merced, who is part of the Civic Science Fellowship supported by the Rita Allen Foundation.

Alondra and Andrea will be supporting CienciaPR in communications and fundraising projects for the next year. Meanwhile, Andrea will be conducting an 18-month assessment of CienciaPR's impact and culturally relevant communication strategies and creating practical resources to increase the civic engagement of scientists.

Welcome to CienciaPR Alondra, Ariadna and Andrea!

Dr. Sudhir Malik, professor of the Physics Department of the Mayagüez Campus (RUM), received a grant of $ 375 thousand from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the project called Physics beyond the Standard Model with the pixel detector CMS, which will allow you to continue your collaboration in the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment, which is carried out at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the largest and most powerful particle accelerator in the world, located in the European Laboratory of Particle Physics (CERN) on the Franco-Swiss border, near Geneva.

You can read the full story in the Spanish version of this post.

San Juan, PR – The precarious mental health situation in Puerto Rico has been worsened by the disasters and emergencies of the past four years, including Hurricanes Irma and Maria, earthquakes and the COVID-19 pandemic. Given this reality, the nonprofit organization Ciencia Puerto Rico (CienciaPR) launched the public service campaign 'Salud mental es plenitud' (Mental health is plenitude or wholeness), as part of the educational toolkit Aquí Nos Cuidamos.