The Biovalor project, a Uruguayan government program implemented by the Ministry of Industry, Energy, and Mining (MIEM), the Ministry of Housing, Land Use Planning, and the Environment (MVOTMA), and the Ministry of Livestock, Agriculture, and Fisheries (MGAP), awarded a grant of 30,000 Uruguayan pesos to biotechnology engineers Magdalena Ripoll and Víctor Vaccaro, both graduate students in the Protein Technology group of the Department of Biotechnology, and Alejandra Espíndola, a master’s student in the same research group, to carry out their graduate thesis projects.
Magdalena Ripoll, who is also a research assistant at the Biotechnology Laboratory, is writing her doctoral thesis on the biotechnological revaluation of industrial waste glycerol, while Víctor Vaccaro is writing his master’s thesis on biotechnological solutions for the degradation of antibiotic contaminants in milk. Both are supervised by Dr. Lorena Betancor, a professor of Protein Technology at the school.
The call for proposals, which closed on March 27, 2020, was designed to promote national research on issues related to the circular economy in agricultural and agro-industrial activities and in small towns.