• The ceremony was chaired by Felipe Benjumea Llorente, Chairman of the Focus-Abengoa Foundation and Abengoa, and was attended by Juan Ignacio Zoido, Mayor of Sevilla, and Anabel Morillo León, Director General of the Foundation.
  • The winners of the thirty-second edition of the Focus-Abengoa Prizes come from the different geographic areas where Abengoa operates and, all together, have received an endowment valued at 100,000 euros.

Seville, April 20, 2015.- The Focus-Abengoa Foundation held today at the Hospital de los Venerables, headquarters of the Foundation, the awards ceremony of the Focus-Abengoa Prizes 2014. The event has been chaired by Felipe Benjumea Llorente, Chairman of the Focus-Abengoa Foundation and Abengoa, and was attended by Juan Ignacio Zoido, Mayor of Sevilla; and Anabel Morillo León, Director General of the Foundation.

At the awards ceremony, the following awards were given: End of Studies and Support to Research, Professional Development, the recognition for the Best Doctoral Thesis on a Seville Related Topic and the Focus-Abengoa International Painting Prize.

The Awards ceremony of Focus-Abengoa Prizes is the meeting point for the winners and the jury, a time when they can share experiences, projects, expectations and objectives, and unite their goals to work together for Culture. This ceremony is being held since 1983, and demonstrates the Foundation's commitment to internationally promote its activities on research and scientific-cultural outreach.

Felipe Benjumea Llorente, Chairman of the Focus-Abengoa Foundation and Abengoa, wanted to highlight the work of all the winners and their contribution to culture, with a special mention to the winners who were unable to attend the event. Similarly, he expressed his respect and sincere gratitude to the jury members that perform their functions selflessly.

The Focus-Abengoa International Painting Prize 2014, which consists of €24,000 money prize, has been given to Óscar Seco for his work "Little Nemo in Secoland". The secondary prizes winners in this edition were Eli Garcia and Koldo Etxebarria, for his works "Still Life with Tree" and "Beauty beyond the Border", respectively. Both awards have a remuneration of € 6,000 each.

The End of Studies in Secondary Education prizes were awarded to Christian Garduño Lara, Francisca Mª de Jesús Reyes Ríos, Alicja Przybyla, Montserrat García Ballesteros and Piotr Bogdam Watorski; and the End of Studies for High School to Ángela de la Cruz Alarcón de la Lastra Ramírez de Cartagena, Lucía Rubio de Castro, Nikolas Bernaola Álvarez and Álvaro Manuel Polo García. Regarding the Vocational Training prizes, in the Intermediate Grade category, Fernando Alcedo Ruiz has been awarded the prize; and in the Higher Level the winners are Lucía Manzano Robles, María Martín Pedraz and Oscar Muñoz González.

The college awards have been granted to Acela Julieta Márquez Soto, Miguel Ángel Ferrari Gómez, Angela Rodríguez Quesada, Isabella Gomes Cerqueira, Laura García Ganfornina, Miguel Ángel Martínez Reyes and Karim Paz Louali.

Also, the Support to Research prize was awarded to Francisco Manuel Reyes Sosa (Employee at Abengoa Bioenergy NT) for his work "Optimization of bioethanol production by means of protein engineering and molecular evolution."

Meanwhile, the Professional Development prizes, part of Abengoa's internal social action channeled through its Foundation, have a special meaning for both Abengoa employees and their families, recognized this year the work of Megan McCarthy (Abengoa Solar LLC, USA), María del Rosario Sahagún Asencio (Abengoa Solar, Spain), Inmaculada Salcedo Dávila (Abengoa Water, Spain), Carlos Roberto Pedro (Abengoa Bioenergía, Brazil), Julien Froissardey (Abengoa Bioenergy, France), Diogo da Silva Castanheira (Abengoa Brasil, Brazil), Roberto Andrés Velázquez Céspedes (Abengoa Chile, Chile), Walter Rubén Grados Torres (Abengoa Perú, Peru), Dulce Angélica Gómez Baylon (Comemsa, Mexico), Ricardo Chávez Núñez del Prado (Omega, Peru), Mª Victoria Codegoni (Abengoa Teyma, Argentina), Lilia Resendiz Guerrero (Abengoa Abeinsa BD, Mexico), Álvaro Sánchez Sánchez de Puerta (Abengoa Abeinsa EPC, Abu Dhabi), Juan Antonio Muñoz Japón (Abengoa Abeinsa EPC, South Africa), Amit V. Malit (Abengoa Abeinsa Engineering, India), Amine Yakbah (Abengoa Abener Energie SARL, Morocco), Antonio Martínez Díaz (Confederación Villaricos, Spain), José Alejandro Avilés Flores (Simosa IT, Spain), Federico Singer Álvarez (Simosa IT, Uruguay) and Cristina Cabrera Angulo (Abengoa, Spain).

Finally, the award for the Best Doctoral Thesis on a Seville Related Topic, endowed with 3.000 €, has been given to the painter and art historian Juan Fernández Lacomba for his study "Landscape painting and plein-air in Andalusia: 1800-1936. Cultural processes and overall corpus."

The Focus-Abengoa prizes highlight the Foundation's strong commitment to education, understood as the society's engine, as well as its commitment to promote and enhance quality training in all those geographical areas where Abengoa is present.

The Focus-Abengoa Foundation

The Focus-Abengoa Foundation was created in 1982 as a result of the cultural work begun in 1972 by Abengoa with the publication of the works Temas Sevillanos e Iconografía de Sevilla (Themes of Seville and Iconography of Seville). A collection of documents, books and engravings on the Kingdom of Seville and by Sevillian authors was created during the same period. This initial cultural work showed Abengoa's directors the importance of the company's involvement in activities that directly benefit society, beyond the firm's core technology work, which led to the creation of the Seville Cultural Fund Foundation. Following the acquisition of Velázquez's Santa Rufina by the Foundation in 2007, the Hospital de los Venerables, a 17th century monument and the headquarters of the Focus-Abengoa Foundation in Seville, has housed the Diego Velázquez Research Centre, a leading institution for studying and disseminating the Baroque era and the Sevillian period of this universally renowned artist.

Attention to this crucial moment of the Golden Age is completed with the legacy of Professor Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez, received by the Foundation in 2011. Consisting of his library, photo library, archive and collection of artworks, its cataloging is enabling to create a library specializing in Baroque art and culture, http://focus.abengoa.es/

For more information:

Communication Department of Abengoa

Patricia Malo de Molina

Tel: +34 954 93 71 11

Email: comunicacion@abengoa.com

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