The partnership between the L’Oréal Group and UNESCO, aimed at promoting female talent in science, has marked its twentieth anniversary by granting five new awards to young women scientists whose research addresses some of the most pressing medical and environmental challenges of today.
The award recipients focus their work on combating obesity (Cintia Folgueira Cobos), cardiovascular regeneration through 4D bioprinting (María Puertas-Bartolomé), the neural circuits of anxiety (Sara Mederos), healthy and sustainable diets (Ujué Fresán Salvo), and precision genome editing (Ylenia Jabalera).
Originally from Navarre, Ujué Fresán is a researcher at the Institute of Agrifood Research and Technology in Barcelona, where she leads a project aimed at integrating nutritional value and environmental impact into a unified metric. The objective is to establish the foundation for a new food labeling system that enables consumers to make healthier and more sustainable dietary choices.
Meanwhile, researcher Ylenia Jabalera, from the Cooperative Research Centre in Biosciences, CIC bioGUNE, in the Basque Country, applies molecular evolution techniques to “rescue” ancestral proteins with editing capabilities that have been lost over millennia. Her work seeks to develop a technology capable of inserting healthy segments of DNA at precise locations without cutting or breaking the genetic strand, which would significantly improve the safety of therapies for patients with rare diseases or conditions such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
These distinctions, awarded by the L’Oréal Group in collaboration with UNESCO, have for two decades sought to address the funding gap affecting female scientific talent. Women currently represent less than 30% of scientific personnel in strategic sectors, and through financial support and increased visibility, the initiative aims to help overcome the structural barriers that continue to limit the careers of women scientists.
