Dear colleagues,
Last Friday, María Ana Tovar-Hernández defended her Ph.D. thesis. She was
the last of the original batch of young, hard-working students that came to
Chetumal for their graduate studies about 6 yr ago. Besides María Ana, they
were Patricia Salazar-Silva, J. Rolando Bastida-Zavala, Luis F.
Carrera-Parra, Mario H. Londoño-Mesa, and Víctor H. Delgado-Blas. Two other
students are now under the M. Sc. program and you will surely hear about
them in the near future: Beatriz Yáñez-Rivera, and Guillermo Ruiz-Cancino.
Hope they can endure our lab conditions to reach a Ph.D. level as well.
Our scientific progress is due to a collective work. Several colleagues have
being involved as external advisors for these colleagues, and that is why I
thank the interest and support of Adriana Giangrande, Leslie Harris, Chris
Glasby, Fredrik Pleijel, Harry ten Hove, J. Angel de León-González, Kirk
Fitzhugh, Kristian Fauchald, Lobo Orensanz, Mikel Liñero, Patrick Gillet,
and Vasily Radashevsky. As many of you know, they are extremely kind and
generous by sharing their experience, time, and even tolerant of us since
they have opened their homes during repeated visits of variable duration.
At the same time, the curators and researchers of most collections in
Europe, Latin America, and the United States were very supportive by sending
out materials to be studied here, or elsewhere, where we concentrated
materials from several museums, in case they could not be sent to Mexico.
Thanks a lot. This may look like a common place, but without the access to
the type or topotype materials, our research activities would be of very
limited relevance, indeed.
We happily acknowledge the kind help from many colleagues which have been
sharing their precious time and experience by evaluating our Spanglish
manuscripts, and by suggesting interesting means to improve their contents
as well. This is not an exaggeration to say that the final products were
really transformed thanks to the mostly anonymous refereeing work from our
wise colleagues.
We have had the economic support from our National Council for Science and
from our own institution, Ecosur. Although we are currently facing a
difficult time for Science in Mexico, since there are few job opportunities,
we are optimistic and trying to change this. Our scholarships program will
be expanded to include foreigners, such that we keep the door open to
promote new scientists. Hope to have better conditions in the near future,
and to keep on enjoying your warm support. Thanks again and happy holidays.
Un abrazo,
Sergio
