Francisco Alberto Tomei Torres

It is with profound sadness that we announce the death of former CDC employee Francisco A. (Paco) Tomei Torres, PhD, a retired health scientist who worked in the Environmental Medicine and Health Systems Intervention Section, Office of Capacity Development and Applied Prevention Science, at the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR).

Throughout his distinguished career at ATSDR, Paco focused on environmental justice and advancing workforce diversity. He supported anyone who asked for assistance, regardless of knowing them or not.

Paco joined ATSDR in 1999 as a Minority Health Program Specialist and served in numerous roles over the years. He created ATSDR en Español and mentored more than 30 ATSDR student interns, PHAP scholars, and Emory MPH students. He mentored hundreds more throughout his life, driven by a deep passion for helping young professionals achieve academic and career advancement.

His service included roles as program manager for Environmental Justice and Brownfields programs in the Office of Urban Affairs; member of the NCEH/ATSDR Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Accessibility, and Belonging Council; Acting Hispanic Employment Manager in the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity; a detail to the Office of Minority Health and Health Equity; and five deployments in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He was an active participant in the CDC Ambassador program.

Paco was featured in a CDC EH Nexus podcast that explored the relationship between environmental factors and healthcare access. It helped listeners understand how environmental factors such as pollution, hazardous waste, and poor air quality directly contribute to health outcomes.

Paco was a strong advocate for Hispanic employment issues within CDC and ATSDR. He received numerous awards and honors, including recognition as a Distinguished 2020 High School Alumnus, and was profiled by his alma mater, the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez. In 2020, he was also recognized by the Ibero-American Society for Environmental Health as a lecturer in the SIBSA Conversation, Environmental Factors in the Strategies for Prevention and Control of the COVID-19 Pandemic Caused by SARS-CoV-2. He received the 2022 PHAP Mentor of the Year award. In September 2024, Paco was recognized for his dedication and longstanding service to the agency at the Hispanic Heritage Month event "Celebrating the Pioneers and Looking at the Future."

Prior to joining CDC, Paco worked in academia. He earned degrees from the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez, MIT, and Harvard University, and completed postdoctoral studies at Los Alamos National Laboratories. After helping establish a new engineering school at the Inter American University of Puerto Rico, he joined the University of New Mexico as a Research Associate Professor.

Paco retired from CDC on December 31, 2025. He is survived by his wife Enid and his twin sons, who were the light of his life. His sons are proud alumni of Florida State University and Emory University.

In accordance with his wishes, Paco will be cremated, and his ashes will be spread in his native Puerto Rico. Funeral details will be shared at a later date.

Our father, Dr. Francisco Alberto Tomei-Torres, was born in 1952 in rural Puerto on the floor of a small wooden house with no running water or electricity in the middle of a 1/3 acre sugar plantation. Growing up, our father took advantage of the very few opportunities available to the Puerto Rican peasantry. At 14 years old, he volunteered for an experimental program at CROEM, a prestigious secondary school that would bus him to and from his remote mountain town despite the school having dorms for the students because they wanted to test whether bussing students affected their academic performance. This did not hinder him as he graduated in 3 years and from there was propelled to his studies in marine biology at the University of Puerto Rico and environmental engineering at Harvard and MIT.

Our parents were married at 23 and immediately wanted to have children. The next 23 years of marriage were met with much grief as they could never seem to conceive no matter what they tried. On their sixth attempt at in vitro, they were delighted to learn that they were miraculously pregnant with twin boys. Our 46-year-old father vowed to devote his life to making sure that Kiko and I never had to endure the hardships he did growing up in a town so poor that his fellow elementary school classmates often had to drop out of school to help their fathers in the sugar cane fields.

It is safe to say that our dad did a great job living up to his promises. We are blessed to have had a father who was so modest, wise, and devoted to his sons. He was the embodiment of what it truly means to be Boricua