Fulbright-García Robles Scholar, Jerónimo from Mexico, Pursues a Master’s in Bioengineering at the University of California, San Diego

My name is Jerónimo Martí Vértiz. I was born and raised in San Luis Potosí, just some 350 km north of Mexico City. I have never been a person who is interested in a single field, which has made me struggle to define what I want to do professionally. Finishing high school, I enrolled in the school of architecture at my city’s Autonomous University, just to later drop out a few months afterwards. I then decided to become a doctor, enrolling in the school of medicine. I studied medicine for three years before realizing that I did not want that either. I transferred to the School of Chemistry to study bioprocess engineering, a degree focused on the production of recombinant proteins and therapeutics. This time I did finish.

During my program, I interned in several labs doing research on bacterial two-component systems, bacterial regulatory network structure and organization, effects of hyperglycemia on endoplasmic reticulum stress, etc. One summer during my program, I participated in a research program for students at the University of Texas at Dallas. I worked on a project trying to optimize the culture of cell spheroids and got to design a microfluidic device prototype. As a final requirement for my degree, I did my thesis in the Center for Genomic Sciences of Mexico’s National Autonomous University. I studied the regulatory network organization in E. coli and Bacillus subtilis.

After finishing my degree, I decided to apply for a Fulbright scholarship to pursue a master’s degree in the United States.

Fulbright-Garcia Robles Scholarship Details

The Fulbright-Garcia Robles Scholarship is the Fulbright program scholarship for students in Mexico who want to pursue higher education in the United States. Available for both master's, which covers two years of funding, and for PhDs, which covers three years of funding. This scholarship gives students a maximum of 25,000 USD per year of funding, so it is necessary to complement it with additional sources of income. Some people complement it with grants from their university, other scholarships, or loans. I complemented my expenses with a loan from the Bank of Mexico, through a program called FIDERH, which gives students the opportunity to finance graduate education with a friendly interest rate.

How Did You Prepare to Apply to the Fulbright-Garcia Robles and the University of California, San Diego?

As a student, I kept good grades in both medicine and bioprocess engineering (GPA ~3.85 in both), but I believe that my research experiences were more important than my grades in obtaining the scholarship. To obtain the scholarship, you also must submit TOEFL iBT, GRE scores, and a statement of purpose that clearly explains what you want to learn with your degree and how you will use that knowledge for the benefit of your country. I believe that the most important part of the assessment is the statement of purpose. You must provide specific programs to which you would want to apply, state why they are relevant to what you plan, and how you may use your degree after graduation. I highly recommend that you get together with a group of friends who are also intending on applying to the scholarship so that you can help each other with your statements of purpose.

I did a Master of Engineering in bioengineering at the University of California, San Diego. During my program, I was able to get an internship at Palm Therapeutics, a small startup developing cancer therapeutics. I was lucky to be able to stay and work at Palm after graduation.

What Advice Would You Give Those Looking to Apply for a Similar Scholarship?

I would recommend that anyone applying for a scholarship be very specific in their statements of purpose. Do some research on courses you would want to take, professors you would like to work with, and lines of research that interest you; mention all of them. You can always change your mind about things along the way, but being specific shows that you are genuinely interested and that you have taken the time to weigh your options carefully.

If you are applying to this or other scholarships, I wish you the best of luck!