Roberto Salvarezza

Roberto Carlos Salvarezza was born on 30 January 1952 in Lanús Oeste, in the southern side of the Greater Buenos Aires conurbation in Buenos Aires Province.^[1][2] He attended high school at the prestigious Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires, and later finished his biochemistry licenciatura at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) in 1977.^[1] In 1981 he finished his PhD in the same university; his dissertation was titled "The microbiological corrosion of aluminium and alloys in water-combustion systems" (Spanish: "Corrosión microbiológica del aluminio y aleaciones en sistemas agua-combustible").^[3]

In the late 1980s he specialized his work on new scanning electron microscope technologies at the Autonomous University of Madrid; from then on his specialty was nanotechnology.^[2]

In 1992 he founded the Nanoscopy Laboratory of the Theoretical and Applied Physicochemical Research (Spanish: Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas; INIFTA) at the National University of La Plata. He worked as director of said laboratory and also of the INIFTA.^[4] Throughout his career, Salvarezza has authored over 300 publications.^[2]

In April 2012 he was designated president of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council by then-Minister of Science Lino Barañao. Salvarezza resigned from the post in 2015 upon the ascension of Mauricio Macri to the presidency of Argentina, citing Macri's intended scientific policy as his main reason.^[5]

In July 2016, Salvarezza was elected representative of the Exact and Natural Sciences area in the CONICET directory, but his designation was not approved by the government in an unprecedented move. This caused controversy among the scientific community, wherein it was decried as "political discrimination". Salvarezza received the backing of the Directive Council of the UBA Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences,^[6] the World Federation of Scientific Workers^[7] and the CyTa group.^[8]