Fulbright U.S. Student Program
Fulbright / FLAD Open Study/Research Award
Claire Underwood
Claire Underwood is a recent graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in Chemical-Biological Engineering. While there, she conducted research exploring interfaces between polymeric and biological systems and is passionate about creating biomimetic materials to further medicine and medical research. She is excited to join the 3Bs Institute at the University of Minho, Braga where she will be developing high throughput methods of barcoded microtissue production for use as a drug discovery platform. Outside of the lab, she looks forward to exploring the food, sports, and culture of the country.
Biomedical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA
Universidade do Minho, Guimarães
8 months
Imen Boussayoud
Imen Boussayoud is a PhD Candidate in History at Brown University researching slavery and gender in the medieval and early modern Mediterranean and Atlantic worlds. Her work has been supported by the American Historical Association, the John Carter Brown Library, and the Medieval Academy of America. As a Fulbright Portugal grantee, Imen will be based in Lisbon, working with Pedro Cardim at Universidade NOVA/CHAM (Centro de Humanidades) on her dissertation, a social history of manumission and freedom in Madeira and the Canary Islands from 1400-1600CE. Imen hails from Brooklyn, New York, and is excited for the start of her Fulbright journey!
History
Brown University, RI
Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Lisboa
8 months
Mariana Correia
Mariana Correia is a biomedical engineer with experience at a medical device company specializing in the craniomaxillofacial field. She holds a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering with a minor in Portuguese from The Ohio State University. As the daughter of Portuguese immigrants, she is passionate about advancing patient-centered care while embracing the cultural insights that come from working across borders. Mariana will collaborate with the Universidade do Minho, Guimarães, to research strategies for improving dental implant performance. Her project focuses on developing implant surfaces that reduce bacterial adhesion and promote bone regeneration to improve patient outcomes and quality of life.
Biomedical Engineering
Ohio State University, OH
Universidade do Minho, Guimarães
8 months
Fulbright / Camões, I.P. Open Study/Research Award
Eliza Josephson
Eliza Josephson is a recent graduate of Yale University with a B.A. in Comparative Literature on the Intensive Language track. Her research investigates multilingual texts that reveal understudied historical ties between Portugal and North Africa. As a Fulbright researcher at the University of Lisbon’s Centre for Comparative Studies, she will address this gap by recovering, translating, and digitizing aljamiado manuscripts, a rare tradition of Portuguese texts written in Arabic script. She aims to expand global scholarly engagement with Portugal’s Islamic heritage by making these texts digitally accessible to new readers, scholars, and students across borders.
Literature
Yale University, CT
Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa
8 months
Fulbright / Azores Regional Government Open Study/Research Award
Matthew Melo
Matthew Melo is a recent Rutgers University graduate with a Master’s in Political Science. He specializes in the intersection of policy and cultural preservation, specifically how governments manage disruptive forces like globalization and tourism. As an ethnographic fieldworker and historical interpreter, Matthew analyzes community identity through interviews and historical research. In collaboration with the University of the Azores, he will evaluate the Azorean government’s policy initiatives to mitigate the impacts of tourism on local culture. His research will synthesize policy recommendations with ethnographic data to determine how traditional heritage can be sustained amidst modern economic shifts.
Political Science
Rutgers University, NJ
Universidade dos Açores, Ponta Delgada
8 months
Maya Philipp
Maya Philipp is a Ph.D. candidate in Biology at Syracuse University. Originally from Folsom, California, she holds a B.S. in Marine Biology from the University of California, San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, with a minor in Urban Studies & Planning. At Syracuse, Maya’s dissertation investigates environmental indicators of cetacean movement and behavior to reveal underlying prey dynamics across the Atlantic. Maya will partner with the Institute of Marine Science – Okeanos of the University of the Azores to investigate the ecological drivers of sperm whale foraging behavior in the Azores and the implications for conservation and management.
Oceanography
Syracuse University, NY
Universidade dos Açores, Horta
8 months
Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Award
Kassandra Ciriza-Monreal
Kassandra Ciriza-Monreal is an alumna of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she studied Human and Organizational Leadership Development and Hispanic Linguistics, with a minor in Translation and Interpreting. Driven by a passion for language acquisition and language access, she conducted research on multilingualism, collaborated with North Carolina local governments on language access plans, gained international experience in Peru with Indigenous weaving cooperatives, and completed a humanitarian mission in Costa Rica. She also studied abroad in Lisbon. Her commitment to educational equity led her to work with KenSAP, tutoring and coaching high-achieving Kenyan students applying to universities in the US, Canada, and the UK. Kassandra holds dual citizenship in the United States and Mexico and looks forward to using her cultural background to make the classroom feel like a small piece of the globe.
Teaching English as a Foreign Language
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, NC
ISG | Business and Economics School, Lisboa
9 months
Lisa Dias
Lisa Dias was born in Miami, Florida. Her upbringing in a multicultural city with Brazilian parents inspired her interest in foreign affairs. As an intern in the Irish Parliament, she developed a passion for international education. She received her BA in Political Science from the University of Florida in 2023. After graduation, she was a study abroad advisor at U.F. She hopes to continue sharing the beauty of cultural exchange with her students as an ETA while connecting with her Portuguese roots. Following her Fulbright grant, she plans to attend law school with a focus on immigration policy.
Teaching English as a Foreign Language
University of Florida, FL
Universidade da Madeira, Funchal
9 months
Marta Leira
Marta Leira is a Galician-American raised in Iowa City, IA. She graduated with a degree in psychology and a minor in gender, health, and healthcare equity from the University of Iowa in 2025. While conducting pain research at the National Institutes of Health, she became interested in how differing health systems approach chronic conditions. In Portugal, Marta is looking forward to gaining an international perspective while guiding her students towards confidence and English fluency. Outside the classroom, she plans to organize intergenerational community events and learn how the ancestral language of “Galego-Português” has informed modern literary traditions and health practices.
Teaching English as a Foreign Language
University of Iowa, IA
Egas Moniz School of Health & Science, Almada
9 months
Nina Davis
Nina Davis is a recent graduate of Cornell University with a degree in Comparative Literature and French. She is a native Portuguese speaker, with a Brazilian-American background and is passionate about language learning and cross-cultural communication and education. Nina is looking forward to exploring Portugal and cultivating a teaching practice that aligns with her love of languages, literature, and translation.
Teaching English as a Foreign Language
Cornell University, NY
Universidade de Aveiro, Aveiro
9 months
Teresa Fontes
Teresa Fontes was born in Fogo, Cape Verde. Her upbringing in Dorchester, Boston’s vibrant
Cape Verdean immigrant community, and her role as a family translator after immigrating at age 13 shaped her passion for language learning, immigrant support, and education equity. A first-generation college graduate from the College of the Holy Cross, she earned her BA in
Mathematics and French and Francophone Studies. While studying abroad in Strasbourg, France, she volunteered at an international elementary school, working with multilingual students from immigrant families. She conducted research on prison gerrymandering and its impact on minority representation in the U.S. As an English Teaching Assistant in Leiria, Portugal, she looks forward to support language learning, engage immigrant communities, and share the U.S. through an immigrant’s perspective. She hopes to pursue a PhD in applied mathematics and become a professor who supports students from diverse educational backgrounds.
Teaching English as a Foreign Language
College of the Holy Cross, MA
Universidade de Leiria e Oeste, Leiria
9 months
Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program
All Disciplines Award
Robert Glover
Robert W. Glover is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Honors at the University of Maine, specializing in political behavior at the intersection of politics and public health. His research focuses on public attitudes towards drug policy, with work published on civic engagement, political participation, and substance use policy in the United States. An award-winning teacher, he is committed to public-facing scholarship and regularly engages broader audiences through media and community research partnerships. As a Fulbright Scholar in Portugal, he will examine comparative approaches to drug policy, exploring one of the most pressing public health challenges of our time.
Political Science
University of Maine, ME
Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisboa
4 months
Fulbright / FCT: Foundation for Science and Technology Award (All Disciplines)
Amy Orsborn
Amy L. Orsborn is an associate professor at the University of Washington where she leads a neural engineering lab focused on motor brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). Her work combines closed-loop, adaptive BCI experiments with computational methods to develop new ways to build BCIs that interact with plasticity in the brain. During her stay at the Champalimaud Institute Centre for Restorative Neurotechnology, she will collaborate with two researchers, Dr. Juan Álvaro Gallego and Dr. John Krakauer. The new projects aim to improve our understanding of how plasticity shapes neuronal and population-level brain dynamics, and apply new adaptive BCI algorithms for stroke rehabilitation.
Neuroscience
University of Washington-Seattle, WA
Fundação Champalimaud, Lisboa
4 months
Darren Drewry
Darren Drewry is an Associate Professor in the Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering at The Ohio State University. Prior to joining the faculty at OSU Darren spent several years as a Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA). With a diverse academic background that includes degrees in physics, computer science and engineering, his research interests span several areas in the domain of computational plant science. His research group develops computer models and utilizes diverse sensing systems to understand and predict land-atmosphere interactions, agricultural resource utilization and productivity. At the University of Lisbon he will work on novel approaches to detect plant disease infection and abiotic stresses with colleagues in the Instituto Superior de Agronomia.
Agriculture
Ohio State University, OH
Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa
4 months
Deanna Arble
Deanna Arble is an Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at Marquette University, where her laboratory studies the relationships between sleep, breathing, circadian rhythms, and obesity. As a Fulbright Scholar in Portugal, she will collaborate with researchers at the Center for Innovative Biomedicine and Biotechnology at the University of Coimbra to investigate how environmental light exposure influences metabolism and obesity risk in humans. Her project combines population-level research with cellular biology to better understand how the timing and duration of light exposure affect metabolic health, with the goal of informing low-cost, noninvasive strategies for improving public health in Milwaukee and beyond.
Biology
Marquette University, WI
Universidade de Coimbra, Coimbra
4 months
Michael Reichert
Michael Reichert is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at Oklahoma State University. Dr. Reichert is a behavioral ecologist and evolutionary biologist and his research focuses on animal communication and cognition. His main study system is acoustic communication in treefrogs, where he has investigated mate choice, competition, the neuroethology of signal perception and the role of metabolic rate in driving variation in these costly signals. He has also worked with insects and songbirds. He currently holds a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, and has established programs for research mentoring and educational outreach.
Biology
Oklahoma State University, OK
Universidade do Porto, Porto
4 months
Shannon Garland
Shannon Garland is Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research is focused on labor exploitation, remuneration and commodification in relation to music media, sociality, and politics, particularly in South American indie rock. She has published in the Oxford Handbook of Economic Ethnomusicology; Culture, Theory and Critique; Ethnomusicology Forum, The Journal of Extreme Anthropology, and Rock Music Studies, among other venues. She is co-editor of the Bloomsbury Academic volume Independence in 21st-Century Popular Music: Cases from Beyond Anglo-America, which examines contemporary music production economies from around the world. She holds a PhD in Ethnomusicology from Columbia University.
Music Studies
University of Pittsburgh, PA
Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Lisboa
4 months
Fulbright Award Atlantic for Future / IPMA – Portuguese Institute for Sea and Atmosphere
Austin Humphries
Austin Humphries is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Fisheries at the University of Rhode Island, where he leads a research group studying how people and ecosystems interact in marine fisheries systems. His interdisciplinary, partner-driven research integrates ecological and social dimensions of fisheries, working closely with communities, non-profits, and governments to inform equitable and sustainable management. As a Fulbright U.S. Scholar at the Instituto Português do Mar e da Atmosfera in Lisbon, he will study small pelagic fish population dynamics to support ecosystem-based fisheries management in Portugal.
Fisheries
University of Rhode Island, RI
IPMA – Instituto Português do Mar e da Atmosfera, Lisboa
6 months
Fulbright Award in Management / ISCTE-IUL, Business Research Unit
Jennifer Feitosa
Jennifer Feitosa is an Associate Professor of Psychological Science at Claremont McKenna College and Director of the METRICS Lab. She earned her M.S. and Ph.D. in Industrial Organizational Psychology. Her research examines teamwork, diversity, and measurement, with a focus on how organizations can maximize the benefits of diverse teams. Her work has been published in leading journals, including American Psychologist and the Journal of Organizational Behavior, and she serves on the editorial boards of Small Groups Research and the Journal of Business and Psychology.
Business
Claremont McKenna College, CA
ISCTE- Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Lisboa
4 months
Fulbright Award in Marketing, Communication & Media Studies / Polytechnic of Lisbon
Ivana Cvetkovic
Ivana Cvetkovic is an Associate Professor of multimedia journalism at Cal Poly Pomona. Her research and teaching interests are situated at the intersection of news media, technology and culture. She primarily focuses on online and social media news discourses, especially discourses on migration, and multimedia message production across a variety of platforms. Her research interests have been influenced by her long-term career in journalism and rapid changes in the news industry. She has worked as a reporter for several daily newspapers and in a PR agency in Serbia. She holds a PhD in communication from the University of New Mexico.
Communications
California State Polytechnic University-Pomona, CA
Universidade Politécnica de Lisboa, Lisboa
4 months
Fulbright Award in Computer Science / Polytechnic of Portalegre
Stefan Brandle
Stefan Brandle has taught computer science for 30+ years at six universities and is currently a professor at Taylor University in Indiana. He has experience in cybersecurity research, satellite communications, intelligent tutoring systems, and automated feedback. He has lived in Africa, Asia, North and South America, and is comfortable speaking English, French, Portuguese and Spanish. Previous Fulbright experience includes one year at the University of Mauritius. Favorite activities include reading, gardening, and travel.
Computer Science
Taylor University, IN
Universidade Politécnica de Portalegre, Portalegre
4 months
Fulbright-Schuman Innovation Award
Michelle Egan
Michelle Egan is a 2026-2027 Schuman Fulbright recipient to Belgium and Portugal at the University of Leuven and University of Minho. She is a currently Professor in the School of International Service in Washington DC, and Director of the Transatlantic Policy (TPC), a funded center focused on broad issues impacting the transatlantic relationship. She is a non-resident fellow at the German Marshall Fund. Her Fulbright project is titled European Economic Security: Protecting Markets, Advancing Economic Interests. She will work on the current geoeconomic turn in Europe and the United States by focusing on developments in inbound and outbound foreign direct investment (FDI). Michelle has published several books, policy briefs and articles on topics ranging from trade policy to single market integration.
Political Science
American University, DC
Universidade do Minho, Braga
3 months