Jaime Lagunez

Overview
Jaime Lagunez (born 1960 in Mexico City) is a scientist and activist. He developed research in therapies for cancer and AIDS and bioinformatics. During the promotion of the research of the field of Complex Systems, he became scientific advisor and director of Instituto de Criónica, an organization dedicated to cryopreservation. He has directed the creation of computer programs for modeling intramolecular communication and microarray analysis. His PhD thesis wih Edward Trifonov of the Wezimann Institute, presented a universal triplet periodicity of coding sequences pointing to extremely conserved ribosomal RNA sites.

Lagunez has spoken in favor of protecting archeological, historical and environmental heritage in Mexico, especially in Cuernavaca and Teotihuacan. Since 2002, along with professors Neil Wollman and anti-apartheid activist Dennis Brutus, he has contributed to the international coalition Make TIAA-CREF Ethical dedicated to lobbying shareholders of 400 billion dollar fund into divesting from corporations shown to have damaged society, among them Costco, Walmart, Altria and Coca-Cola.

In 2004 the organization Frente Civico, with which he collaborates received the National Mendez Arceo Human Rights for having protected civil liberties and the environment against repressive governments. He has made constant declarations against privatizations in Mexico such as that of the telephone company, PEMEX, and the National University. In the same year he was violently dismissed from his work at the National University. Though he has had the support of scientific organizations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the American Chemical Society, the government of that country has refused to allow him to continue his scientific career for nearly 3 years. In 2005, 60 archaeological sites in Cuernavaca, Morelos were published as heritage sites by the state of Morelos as a result of the work of the Frente Civico. He also participated in the process of establishing internal and surrounding forests as natural reserves in the state.

He is included by Marquis in Who's Who in Science and Engineering and Who's Who in the World.