Oct. 27, 2006 - Dr. Rodolfo Quintero, an expert on medicinal plants, biopesticides, and biotechnology in Latin American and the Caribbean, will visit ASU next week to lead two conferences.

Quintero is director of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Division of Metropolitan Autonomous University, Cuajimalpa, a new campus of one of the largest universities in Mexico City.  He also is a national investigator, level three, of the National Research System of Mexico. Until recently he was in charge of the Biotechnology Program of the Mexican Institute of Oil.

ASU sponsors for his visit are the Arkansas Biosciences Institute, the Office of Research and Technology Transfer, the Colleges of Agriculture and Sciences and Mathematics, the Departments of Biological Sciences and Chemistry and Physics, and the Environmental Sciences Ph.D. Program.

He will present the “Biotechnology of Petroleum,” with emphasis in "phytoremediation and bioremediation," in ABI Room 107 at 4 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 2. 

The second presentation, “Biotechnology of Medicinal Plants,” will begin at 10 a.m. Friday, Nov. 3, in the Student Union Auditorium.

While in Jonesboro, he also will discuss collaboration opportunities between ABI and ASU.

Dr. Argelia Lorence, assistant professor of metabolic engineering at ASU, who is coordinating his visit, worked with him at the United Nations when he was director of the Biotechnology Program for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Quintero is a member of the New York Academy of Sciences, the International Society of Environmental Biotechnology and the Mexican Academy of Engineering, among other distinguished scientific societies. He is in high demand internationally, as evidenced by more than 400 conferences he has conducted in 30 countries. Among his career achievements, he has produced more than 250 scientific papers and won several prestigious awards in the sciences.

He earned his master's in chemical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his doctorate in chemical engineering at the University of Manchester, Institute of Science and Technology.