Annie Pardo Cemo
Annie Pardo Cemo is a Mexican cell biologist specializing in the study of the extracellular matrix. She is a member of the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores and received the National Prize for Arts and Sciences in 2023. She is the mother of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo.
Early life
Annie Pardo Cemo was born in Mexico City on 6 June 1940. Her parents, Mati Magdalena Semo Calev and Jose Pardo Benjaminoff, were Sephardic Jews from Sofia, Bulgaria. As a result of the persecution of Jews in Bulgaria, Pardo's parents emigrated to Mandatory Palestine and then they arrived in Mexico shortly before her birth.In 1960, she married chemical engineer Carlos Sheinbaum Yoselevitz, with whom she had three children: Julio, Claudia, and Adriana. The couple participated in the Mexican Movement of 1968.
Academic career
Annie Pardo studied biology at the Faculty of Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She also completed her master's and doctoral degrees in biochemistry at the same university. She conducted research stays at the American universities of Washington University in St. Louis; at the University of Illinois Chicago, and at the pathology department of the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.In 1980, she founded the biochemistry research laboratory at the Faculty of Sciences of UNAM. She was a "C-level" professor at the Faculty of Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and was named a "level III researcher" of the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores.
In May 2023, she received the National Prize for Arts and Sciences in the category of physical-mathematical and natural sciences for "her research in biochemistry, lung diseases, and aging studies".