Cuban academicians mourn death of eminent scientist

HAVANA, Cuba, Aug 16 (ACN) The Cuban Academy of Sciences (ACC) mourned the death of Mayra Paulina Hernandez Sanchez, PhD in physical sciences and tenured researcher.

She was an exceptional scientist, very active and beloved of the Natural and Exact Sciences Section of the ACC, one of its full academicians, born on July 1, 1954 and became. Professor at the Institute of Materials Science and Technology (IMRE), University of Havana, where she graduated in Physics in 1978 and PhD in Physical Sciences in 2000.

She worked on the physicochemical, structural and electronic characterization at the atomic level of materials with applications in biology, medicine and materials science.

Specifically, she devoted herself to the study of solid surfaces and interfaces through the use of techniques related to microscopy (SEM, TEM, STM and AFM) in addition to electrical photoemission and spectroscopic measurements (XPS, ARXPS, UPS and XANES).

Since 1974, she conducted research in collaboration with colleagues from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the Humboldt University (Germany), the National Synchrotron Light Laboratory (Brazil), and the Optical Research Centers (CIOP, Argentina) and the Polytechnic (Austria), among others.

She was a member of the IMRE Scientific Council from 2003 to 2009 and its president from 2006 to 2009, the Scientific Council of the University of Havana since 2009 and the IMRE Academic Committee since 2000.
She led since 2009 the Nano Group of the Nano Materials Division of IMRE, served as tutor of 30 theses distributed in undergraduate, master's and doctoral programs and gave more than 15 specialized conferences in several countries.

She received in 2010 the Carlos J. Finlay Order, the status of Emeritus Researcher of the University of Havana, for her remarkable research the annual national award of the Cuban Academy of Sciences on 6 occasions, and the prestigious Sofia Kovalevskaya International Award (2016) to relevant women in basic sciences.