ITHACA, N.Y. -- Mexican President Vicente Fox on Nov. 24 presented Mexico's most prestigious youth award, the Premio Nacional de Juventud (National Youth Prize), to Gerardo Chowell-Puente, a third-year Ph.D. candidate at Cornell University, for his research in the mathematical modeling of communication in networks, which has provided new understanding of the way disease spreads through a population.

In recent work as a visiting research assistant at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Chowell-Puente and his Los Alamos colleagues modeled the transmission of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in Hong Kong, Singapore and Ontario, Canada. The work validated the decision of Canadian health authorities to intervene with strict quarantines. Without that intervention, the model showed, the disease might have spread to some 200,000 people, instead of the few hundred who were infected.

Fox presented to Chowell-Puente a signed diploma, a gold medal and 110,000 Mexican pesos (nearly $10,000). Chowell-Puente was nominated for the prize, awarded by the Instituto Mexicano de la Juventud (Mexican Institute of Youth), by his academic adviser at Cornell, Carlos Castillo-Chavez, Cornell professor of biometrics and director of the Mathematical and Theoretical Biology Institute in Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. The prize recognizes cumulative academic activities, including research, publications, invited talks, awards and community service.

"Gerardo has been the best investment that my institute has made on an international student in its seven summers of operation," Castillo-Chavez said in his nomination. "[He] is extremely likely to become a well-known, possibly famous, computational and theoretical scientist." Chowell-Puente was born in Leon Guanajuato, Mexico, and lived most of his life in the city of Colima. He received his undergraduate degree in computer science and telecommunications from the Universidad de Colima, where he first collaborated with Castillo-Chavez, and he entered Cornell as a graduate student in biological statistics and computational biology in August 2001. His research concerns the mathematical modeling of networks, which has applications ranging from the management of the Internet to the behavior of biological systems to the movement of human populations. His personal focus has been on disease control.

"I hope to merit the recognition of my countrymen through further research that benefits the health of Mexico and the battle against emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases worldwide," Chowell-Puente said in accepting the award.

He has presented his research results at the 107th and 108th annual meetings of the American Mathematical Society and published in several professional journals. He is co-author, with Castillo-Chavez, of the chapter "Worst-Case Scenarios and Epidemics" in the book Biomathematical and Modeling Approaches in Homeland Security, to be published in December.

In January 2004, Chowell-Puente will begin a year-long term in Los Alamos' Center for Nonlinear Studies.