POSTED: Thursday, September 22, 2011 - 11:21am
UPDATED: Friday, September 23, 2011 - 4:16pm
EL PASO- The Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers announced that Jorge A. Lopez, Ph.D., professor of physics at The University of Texas at El Paso, is its 2011 Educator of the Year.
The society will present its awards during a black-tie gala Oct. 29 in the Anaheim Convention Center. The celebration is part of the organization’s annual conference.
Lopez, who earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics from UTEP in 1977 and 1979, respectively, has been a University faculty member since 1990. He also has served as assistant dean of the College of Science (1999-2001) and chair of the Department of Physics (2001-08).
The professor, whose research specialty is nuclear physics, was awarded a $186,000, three-year National Science Foundation grant this summer to compare theoretical computations to experimental data from other institutions of higher education. Lopez and his physics students will collaborate with counterparts from the University of Buenos Aires- Argentina.