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Susana López Charretón
current wikipedia page Susana López Charretón

Early life and Education
Susana López Charretón was born in Mexico City in June 1957. Dr. López Charretón knew from a young age that she wanted to pursue biology. Dr. López Charretón followed her passion for Biology and enrolled into the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), where she completed her bachelor’s in basic biomedical research in 1980, followed by a masters in 1983 and a PhD in 1986 .While finishing her graduate degrees, she spent a few years at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech).

Research interests
Dr. López Charretón has led her research programas principal investigator at the Biotechnology Institute (UNAM) in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Dr. López Charretón serves as a mentor for master's and PhD students, and currently holds a SNIlevel III investigator status. Throughout her career, Dr. López Charretón has made advancements in our understanding of rotavirus.One of the most important findings from Dr. López Charretón research group is related to viral entry into a human body. Rotavirus is spread through the mouth and skin, but the virus leaves those cells alone and only infects and reproduces in cells in the small intestine. She’s published more than 130 papers in international journals. She also spent nearly nine years serving on the Editorial Board for the Journal of Virology.

Awards and recognition
Dr. López Charretón won the Gabino Barreda Medal from UNAM in 1988 for her PhD research. In 1991, she was a Fogarty Fellow. Dr. López Charretón won the Funsalud Biennial Award in Gastrointestinal Diseases from the Mexican Foundation for Health in 2000 and 2002. In 2001, she was awarded the Carlos J. Finlay Prize for Microbiology from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). In 2000, Dr. López Charretón became an International Research Scholar with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) providing funding for the potential for transformative impact of her rotavirus research.

In 2010, HHMI asked Dr. López Charretón what she would do to change the world in one year. She responded, “I would invest that year in convincing people who make enormous amounts of money (TV and movie stars, singers, athletes, etc.) to donate just a small part of their earnings to make a well-administered foundation, with the sole purpose of ensuring that every child in underdeveloped countries has access to all available vaccines, independent of their cost, and to guarantee that these children are nourished properly during the first five years of their lives. This would help give a fair start in life to the people born in underdeveloped nations.”

In 2012, Dr. López Charretón won the LÓréal-UNESCO Prize for Women in Science, a prestigious prize given to only one woman scientist per continent each year. Dr. López Charretón won the award for Latin America for “identifying how rotaviruses cause the death of 600,000 children each year.” That same year, she was also awarded the Omecihuatl Medal from the Women’s Institute of Mexico City. In 2013, Dr. López Charretón received the "Premio Universidad Nacional" for Natural Sciences research.