It is my pleasure to let you know that our first year graduate student Maria Monica Castellanos Montilla will receive the prestigious Ponce de Leon award in Colombia.

The award has been conferred 55 times, to 49 civil engineers, three electronic engineers, one information technologist, one industrial engineer and one chemical engineer. There have been ties in 1953, 2010 (electronic engineers) and 2011. The first woman to receive this valuable distinction is the engineer Castellanos Mantilla, who currently is in grad school in Materials Science and Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University.

Congratulations Maria Monica in this well deserved award!

Information regarding the award is below:

For the first time, Chemical Engineering receives the prestigious Ponce de Leon award. When the engineer Manuel Ponce de Leon died in 1899 in Bogota, he put the following clause in his will, “To establish an award in the College of Mathematics and Engineering of this city, $4000, in whose interests the Colombian Society of Engineers (SCI) will give to the most outstanding student of the College during the year.” The Board of Directors of the SCI – the oldest and most recognized professional society of engineers in the nation and founded on the 29th of May, 1887 – under presidency of engineer Nicolas Saenz, following Record No. 37 1899, established the Manuel Ponce de Leon Award “to be given to the student of the College of Mathematics and Engineering of the National University in Bogota that has finished his or her studies in the academic period of the year immediately preceding the award, that has been recognized by the Board of Directors, and whose grade point average is not less than 92 % of the maximum grade point average.” Through the years, and after it was first given in 1904 to Engineer Ricardo Perez, the Board of Directors of the College have been updating the rules of the award, in accordance with changes in the academic regimen at the University; furthermore, in 1977, the Board, taking into account the diversity of undergraduate Engineering programs, decided to grant the award to graduates of any engineering discipline, not only Civil Engineering, a ruling still in effect. For the year 2011, there is a tie between Maria Monica Castellanos Mantilla, chemical engineer, and Daniel Enrique Jurado Martinez, electronic engineer, who graduated the 10th of March in 2010, and obtained a final grade point average of 4.7. Therefore, in the graduation ceremony of the 28th of March, the College of Engineering nominated them to receive the award Ponce de Leon, which will be awarded from the Colombian Society of Engineers in its solemn session in May 27th 2011. Including the current year (2011), the award has been conferred 55 times, to 49 civil engineers, three electronic engineers, one information technologist, one industrial engineer and one chemical engineer. There have been ties in 1953, 2010 (electronic engineers) and 2011. The first woman to receive this valuable distinction is the engineer Castellanos Mantilla, who currently is in grad school in Materials Science and Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University.