Yesterday, in the Noble Hall of the Town Hall of the municipality of La Orotava (Tenerife), took place the award ceremony of the Villa de La Orotava Science Fair Awards, a recognition to people and institutions that are committed to outreach and scientific research. In this first edition, the award in the outreach category went to the journalist and writer Carmen del Puerto, who has been in charge of communications at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) for more than three decades. She was joined by the parasitologist Basilio Valladares (Research Award) and the physicist and teacher Miguel Hernández (Education Award).

Carmen del Puerto holds a PhD in Information Sciences, is a journalist specialising in science and technology, and a writer. She has developed most of her professional activity at the IAC, since 1986, as head of Editions and, since 2014, as head of the Unit of Communication and Scientific Culture (UC3) until October 2022. She has also been a lecturer, for seven years, in the Master's degree in Astrophysics at the University of La Laguna and director of the Museum of Science and the Cosmos of the Cabildo of Tenerife between 2008 and 2014. All of these jobs she has combined with a singular literary vocation, publishing several books of fiction, poetry and scientific outreach. She has also written and directed multimedia plays and has coordinated transversal projects on literature and astronomy.