A joint committee made up of representatives of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the US Embassy Annually awards pre-doctoral research scholarships in universities or research centres in the United States, in any discipline, for a minimum period of six months and a maximum of twelve.

Adolfo Rodríguez Eguren will carry out his stay at Yale University (New Haven, Connecticut), where he will further study therapies for female infertility. Àngela Vidal Verdú will be at the Scripps Research Centre in San Diego (California), where she will complete the final part of her PhD thesis, focused on the bioremediation of plastic waste.

The grants are awarded on a highly competitive basis. There are fifteen grants distributed in three programmes: five specific scholarships for PhD students from Andalusian universities (funded by the Junta de Andalucía), three specific scholarships for PhD students from Murcia (funded by the regional government); and 7 general programme scholarships open to any PhD student from a Spanish university.

Àngela Vidal studied Biotechnology at the Universitat de València and is currently doing her PhD at the Biotechnology and Synthetic Biology Group, directed by researchers Manel Porcar and Juli Peretó, with a University Teacher Training Programme (FPU) contract. She also collaborates in the field of teaching at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of the Universitat de València.

The aforementioned group is located at the Institute for Integrative Systems Biology (I2SysBio), a research centre of the Universitat de València and the CSIC. Vidal’s research line is based on microbial bioremediation, the use of microorganisms to degrade polluting compounds. Specifically, she is working on the bioremediation of petroleum derivatives such as fuels or plastics, as well as urban waste composed of cellulose.

Vidal Verdú was awarded the extraordinary end-of-degree prize in Biotechnology by the Universitat, and in 2019 she received the Ciutat d'Algemesí scientific-technical prize for Young Researchers for a work describing the communities of microorganisms that live in marine plastic waste and their capacity to degrade it.

Adolfo Rodríguez studied Biotechnology at the University Pablo de Olavide (Seville) and did the Master’s Degree in Biotechnology of Assisted Human Reproduction at the Universitat de València, with an excellent mention in both. He is currently working on his thesis in the field of female infertility with a FPU contract, within the Stem Cells and Bioengineering group, directed by Irene Cervelló. He also collaborates in the field of teaching at the Department of Paediatrics, Gynaecology and Obstetrics of the Universitat. His group is part of the IVI-IIS La Fe Foundation.

Rodríguez Eguren's research focuses on the search for regenerative therapies aimed at endometrial pathologies in women with infertility problems. Adolfo Rodríguez has experience in assisted reproduction clinics and in research, having worked at prestigious centres such as the CNIC and the CABD, where he carried out research on cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases, respectively.

His research line pays special attention to uterine pathologies such as Asherman's Syndrome, or women with endometrial atrophy (SA/AE), pathological conditions that mean that the embryo cannot implant in the uterus and therefore they cannot become pregnant.

In his thesis project, he analyses the possible application of platelet-rich plasma from umbilical cord blood in in vitro models, in vivo (animal models with uterine damage) and in clinical trials with patients suffering from these pathologies.