Esther Orozco

María Esther Orozco Orozco (born 25 April 1945) is a Mexican biologist, researcher and politician. She has received the UNESCO/Institut Pasteur Medal (1997), the L'Oréal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science (2006) served as rector of the Autonomous University of Mexico City (UACM) and has run for governor of Chihuahua representing the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).

Orozco received a bachelor's degree in Chemistry from the Autonomous University of Chihuahua and both a master's degree and a doctorate's degree in Cell biology from Cinvestav. She has worked at the Institute of Experimental Pathology of the same institution, co-founded of the Center for Scientific Research and Applied Technology and, from December 2006 to April 2010, served as director of the Institute for Science and Technology of Mexico City.

As a visiting scholar, she has lectured at Harvard University and the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Politically she is affiliated with the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, for which she ran unsuccessfully for governor of Chihuahua in 1998. She is also a prominent pro-choice activist in the Mexican capital.

Orozco served as rector of the Autonomous University of Mexico City (UACM) from 21 April 2010 to 13 March 2013, when she was ousted by 25 dissenting members of the administrative board; a group that consisted of nine students representatives, fifteen academics and a member of the staff.

According to the Associated Press, during her rectorate she had tried to reduce the inefficiencies and low graduation rate of the university, as only a few dozen of its nearly 15,000 students had actually graduated since the institution was founded eleven years before, 52% had a grade average lower than 2.5 out of a 10-point scale and academics routinely prevented external evaluation.However, her proposals were resisted by members of the staff and student community, who claimed that a previous election for the university's administrative board was rigged and accused her of corruption and financial mismanagement.

After months of protests, and despite her ratification by 28 members of the board, dissenting members appointed Marxist philosopher Enrique Dussel as substitute; a measure supported days later by the Executive, the Legislative Assembly and Human Rights Commission of Mexico City through a jointly signed letter.