The inclusion of Puerto Padre’s scientist Roberto Rodríguez Labrada as a Young Affiliate member of the World Academy of Sciences is news that fills this oriental territory with rejoicing.
Las Tunas, Cuba.- Those of us who know him and know about his passionate career, we have no doubt that his performance will be important in the next five years at this renowned institution, based in Italy, which brings together researchers from countries in the process of developing.
A graduated in Microbiology from the University of Havana, this young man, who has spent most of his career at the Center for Research and Rehabilitation of Hereditary Ataxias in the province of Holguín, is a true son of these lands.
He is still the pride of Professor Vargas, the man who is always grateful for the first accurate steps in the study of Biology, when he was just a slim little boy who arrived at the Luis Urquiza Jorge Vocational Pre-university Institute with dreams in his backpack, and an infinite desire to grow, like so many around him.
He once confessed to me that he would have liked to be a journalist. Then he told me that mine was the most beautiful profession in the world and his eyes shone with the joy of the child who ran through the corridors of Radio Libertad. And he told me the noises and the scares that had marked him between the consoles and the studios of the one that was the headquarters of that local station that he loves so much.
He returned recently to tell us about his work over the years. He decided to be a scientist. He told me that because of that fast-talking mania that prevented him from having a precise diction for these tasks and because "words were not his thing", they were convoluted in saying and thus, he couldn’t.
From that day I knew that he was going to be among the best. A studious, determined young man, a good friend, who knows how to recognize his strengths and is guided by them, seldom makes mistakes in his determinations. Neither was I wrong with "Bobby", as many call him since.
He now works at the Center for Neurosciences and in 2019, at 38 years of age, he received the Carlos J. Fínlay Order, the highest distinction granted by the Council of State of this country in the field of scientific research.
In addition, he holds several awards from the Cuban Academy of Sciences, the International Brain Research Organization, and the World Society for Movement Disorders.
Today is a day of good news. Because behind that result, I know, there is the love of his family, flattened in Puerto Padre; the sleepless nights of his wife, a scientist like him and, surely, the joy of his child, little boy who loves balls, games, and who in his life will have many reasons to be very proud of dad, like us.
