^{From left to right: ASME Executive Director Virgil Carter; 2006 ASME JJCCI Medal recipient Abel Hernandez-Guerrero, Ph.D;
ASME President Terry Shoup; Chair of the ASME Committee on Honors William W. Durgin.}

Abel Hernandez-Guerrero, Ph.D., was awarded the ASME Johnson & Johnson Consumer Companies, Inc. Medal during the Honors Assembly at the 2006 Congress in Chicago. Dr. Hernandez-Guerrero, professor of mechanical engineering at the Universidad de Guanajuato (Salamanca, Mexico), was recognized for his tireless dedication to improving cross-cultural understanding, particularly between the U.S. and Mexico, through the founding of and continued involvement in a unique short-term exchange program between the University of Guanajuato in Mexico and Texas A&M University.

Dr. Hernandez-Guerrero is a true ambassador for improving cultural diversity and understanding between students. Through the Student Exchange Program he founded in 1997, Hernandez-Guerrero promotes not only technical and educational aspects but also cultural, historical and social aspects of the international engineering community. Students from Texas A&M visit the Universidad de Guanajuato and spend a week totally immersed in the lives of the students, university and community. Later in the academic year, students from the University de Guanajuato visit Texas A&M and live the lives of the students there.

Dr. Hernandez-Guerrero founded the ASME student section at the Universidad de Guanajuato where he has served as student advisor for 14 years, as well as six other ASME student sections in Mexico. He is an ASME Fellow, a past president of the Mexican Society of Mechanical Engineers and a member of the Mexican System of Researchers, a national top-level honors society. He received his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering at the Universidad de Guanajuato in 1984 and his master’s degree and Ph.D. at Oregon State University, Corvallis in 1987 and 1991, respectively.

The ASME Johnson & Johnson Consumer Companies, Inc. Medal recognizes outstanding contribution by an individual, company, government entity, school or other organization toward developing and implementing practices, processes and programs that value and strategically manage diversity and inclusiveness in engineering. Nominations for the 2007 JJCCI Medal will be accepted through February 1, 2007. Information on the Medal, as well as the nomination criteria and forms, are available at http://www.asme.org/Governance/Honors/SocietyAwards/Johnson_Johnson_Consumer.cfm.