Academic José Zagall Moya wins the 2024 National Prize in Natural Sciences

The academic of the Department of Materials Chemistry of the Faculty of Chemistry and Biology of the University of Santiago, José Zagal Moya, was elected on Thursday, the National Prize of Natural Sciences 2024.

Meanwhile, Ricardo Baeza Yates, an academic at the University of Chile, won the National Prize for Applied Sciences and Technology.

Both awards were announced by the Ministry of Education.

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“We have greatly appreciated the contribution he has made specifically in the field of computing, data mining and, in particular, we also appreciate the work he has done on the ethics of the use of data as well as artificial intelligence, which is very relevant to the times we live in today, in terms of how the use of information technologies and especially artificial intelligence is increasingly integrated into the daily growth of our society,” said the Minister of Education, Nicolás Cataldo, of the award.

“We are really happy and proud to be able to recognize a Chilean but global figure in the field of computer science and computer engineering, who has contributed to basic sciences and their applications, and this is what the Applied Sciences Award is all about,” added Universidad de Chile President Rosa Davies.

Baeza Yates is currently a full professor at the University of Chile and a senior researcher at the Milenio Fundamentos de los Data Institute.

He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada); a MS in Electrical Engineering and MS in Computer Science; a Civil Electrical Engineer and a BS in Computer Science, all titles and degrees obtained from the University of Chile. He is currently the Research Director of the Institute for Experimental Artificial Intelligence at Northeastern University, Silicon Valley Campus, and an Associate Member of the Network Science Institute at the same university.

His areas of interest include algorithms and data structures, information retrieval, web search and data mining, as well as data science and data visualization. Additionally, the use of machine learning for human well-being, including the impact of AI biases. He was also one of the pioneers of bioinformatics in Chile.

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Meanwhile, Zagal was honored for his contributions to key areas of challenge facing the world today, such as clean energy transformation.

He is a chemist from the University of Chile, holds a PhD from Case Western Reserve University (USA) and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York. Internationally, he is part of the Latin American Academy of Sciences, and was awarded the Fellowship of the Royal Society of Chemistry in the United Kingdom in 2018, for his contributions to various fields of electrochemistry.

At the national level, he is a member of the Chilean Academy of Sciences and an academic with outstanding scientific production, with more than 200 publications in indexed journals. He has been awarded the title of Distinguished Professor and was honored last year for his 50 years of service to the University of Santiago.

“In 2024, when we celebrate the 175th anniversary of the founding of the University of Santiago de Chile, I would like to express my satisfaction with this new contribution made by Dr. José Zagal Moya to the recognition of our University, which supported his candidacy for the National Prize of Nature and Science, convinced of its merit at the national level,” said Rodrigo Vidal, Dean of USACH.

He said: “I congratulate Dr. Al-Zaghal, who today became the third winner of our university’s national award, to him and to all those who have cooperated with him and his students throughout these years.”