San Antonio (March 9 , 2004) — President George W. Bush has reappointed Francisco G. Cigarroa, M.D., president of The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, to be a member of the President’s Committee on the National Medal of Science.
Congress created the National Medal of Science in 1959 as a Presidential Award to be given to individuals “deserving of special recognition by reason of their outstanding contributions to knowledge in the physical, biological, mathematical or engineering sciences.” In 1980 the award was expanded to include the social and behavioral sciences.
The president appoints 12 of the nation’s most prominent leaders in the fields of research, science and engineering to evaluate award nominees. The National Medal of Science, which falls under the auspices of the National Science Foundation, has been awarded to about 400 meritorious scientists and engineers.
Dr. Cigarroa, a nationally renowned pediatric and transplant surgeon, earned a bachelor’s degree from Yale in 1979 and received his medical degree with highest honors from the UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas in 1983. He has completed 12 years of postgraduate training. He was chief resident at Harvard’s teaching hospital, Massachusetts General in Boston, and completed a fellowship at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.