Professor Prieto born in Bogotá, Colombia, in June 29th 1951. He holds a Physicist degree , in 1974 and a Magister Scientiae degree in Physics from Universidad Nacional de Colombia www.unal.edu.co, in 1978 working on Silicon Oxide Thin films. He received the "Doktor der Naturwissenschaften" Dr.rer.nat. from Rheinische Westfaliche Hochschule RWTH-Aachen Germany in 1982 www.rwth-aachen.de for the doctoral thesis: ¨Neutronenkleinwinkelstreuung an Guinier-Preston-Zonen in Aluminium-Kupfer-Legierungen¨ ( Small Angle Neutron Scattering on Guinier-Preston Zones in AlCu Alloys).

He joined the Universidad del Valle www.univalle.edu.co Cali, Colombia, in 1974. He became Full Professor at the Physics Department of the Universidad del Valle in 1986. Presently, he heads the Thin Films Research Group http://calima.univalle.edu.co which he established in 1978 Most of Prieto's career has been devoted to R&D of materials science and electronic devices, particularly amorphous semiconductors, solar cells, High Temperature Superconductors Material, HTC Electronic Devices and Hard Coating Materials. The Thin Film laboratory he leads began with the study of amorphous metallic alloys and through a COLCIECIAS research project (1983-1987) with Hydrogenated Amorphous-Si thin films. This project was done in close collaboration with the Applied. Physics Institute at Campinas University, Brazil www.unicamp.br Since 1989 he is working on the development of high-temperature superconductor devices based on superconducting thin films in close collaboration with Prof. K. Urban from the Microstructural Institute at the Research Center Juelich, Germany www.fz-juelich.de in Magnetic materials in close collaboration with Prof. Ivan K. Schuller at the University of California San Diego, USA http://sdphln.ucsd.edu/~iksgrp/ in PZTt-ferroelectric thin films in close collaboration with Dr. O. Auciello at the Argonne National auciello@anl.gov and in Hard Coating Materials with the CYTED Program www.calima.unicalle.edu.co/cyted.

He is an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow www.avh.de (1988), Guggenheim Fellow www.fg.org (1998) and 2000-American Physical Society fellow www.aps.org Member of the Sociedad Colombiana de Física (Colombian Physical Society), Asociación Colombiana para el Avance de la Ciencia (Colombian Association for the Advance of Science), American Physical Society. At present, he is also President of the Colombian Physical Society and member of the Latin American Federation of Physical Societies FELASOFI. and current member of the directory of the Latin American Physics l Center (Centro Latinoamericano de Física) CLAF. Prof Prieto has authored or co-authored over 100 scientific publications.

He is first winer of the an G77 Grup Fellow in 2005.