Rafael Andrés Guarga Ferro (born 23 August 1940 in

Montevideo Montevideo () is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Uruguay, largest city of Uruguay. According to the 2011 census, the city proper has a population of 1,319,108 (about one-third of the country's total population) in an area of . M ...

) is a Uruguayan industrial engineer and

inventor An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an ...

Career

After graduating from the

University of the Republic The University of the Republic ( es, Universidad de la República, sometimes ''UdelaR'') is Uruguay's oldest public university. It is by far the country's largest university, as well as the second largest public university in South America and t ...

, Guarga had to leave his country due to the civic-military dictatorship. He pursued his career in Mexico, obtaining a doctorate at the

National Autonomous University of Mexico The National Autonomous University of Mexico ( es, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM) is a public research university in Mexico. It is consistently ranked as one of the best universities in Latin America, where it's also the bigges ...

. Back in Uruguay he devoted himself to lecturing; in 1992-1998 he served as Dean of the School of Engineering, and in 1998-2006 as Rector of the university. In the late 1990s Guarga invented the

selective inverted sink The selective inverted sink or SIS is a device used by farmers to protect plants from frost, developed by Uruguayan Rafael Guarga in the late 1990s. The sink is actually a large fan housed in a chimney-like structure, and works by defeating s ...

(acronym SIS), a device used by farmers to protect plants from

frost Frost is a thin layer of ice on a solid surface, which forms from water vapor in an above-freezing atmosphere coming in contact with a solid surface whose temperature is below freezing, and resulting in a phase change from water vapor (a gas) ...

.Nuevo método de control de heladas de radiación: SIS (sumidero invertido selectivo)
Last access: 19 April 2010

References

1940 births Living people University of the Republic (Uruguay) alumni Academic staff of the University of the Republic (Uruguay) University of the Republic (Uruguay) rectors Uruguayan engineers National Autonomous University of Mexico alumni Academic staff of the National Autonomous University of Mexico Uruguayan inventors {{Uruguay-engineer-stub