Five recent graduates of the University of Miami and one current student received Fulbright U.S. Student Program awards this spring, allowing them to conduct research, or teach English in another country for several months.
Miller School of Medicine third-year student Ramy Labib, along with spring graduate Ethan Tieu, received Fulbright research awards to work at labs in Jordan and Germany, respectively. Meanwhile, Jose Restrepo, who also graduated in May, will be teaching English in Spain, along with recent alumna Yanesi Gonzalez, who will be teaching in the nation’s Canary Islands. Alumni Dylan Thompson will be teaching English in Cambodia this fall, and Alexander Walch Rojas will be teaching English in Brazil starting next March.
In addition, sophomore Agatha Rivero won a Fulbright award to attend one of its three-week UK Summer Institutess—open to all undergraduate students in the U.S.—starting in June at Queens University Belfast in Northern Ireland.
Erika Green Liberus, director of the University’s Prestigious Awards and Fellowships unit in the Office of Academic Enhancement, and associate director Molly Lockwood Ho, were thrilled with this year’s recipients.
“These awardees are all driven, motivated students and alumni who will make UM proud,” Green said. “Each of our awardees will bring their own unique perspectives to the Fulbright experience. This is a great reminder that Fulbright supports many different pathways and goals, and we’re eager to continue building a culture of Fulbright on campus.”
All students are eligible to apply for the Fulbright U.S. Student Program starting in the spring of their junior year of undergraduate education and can also apply as alumni or graduate students. Funded by the U.S. Department of State, this highly selective, prestigious award is geared toward students who are interested in mutual cultural exchange, and each year an increasing number of University students and alumni win the award.
This is the second consecutive year that the University has had grantees traveling to Brazil and Germany on Fulbright grants, Lockwood Ho added. But it is also the first year that any student or alumnus from the University is going to teach English in Cambodia. It is also the first year in several that two students are going to teach English in Spain, which is one of the most competitive Fulbright programs, Lockwood Ho said.
“This year is a demonstration about how competitive an alum can be after graduating and having some experience outside of college,” Liberus added.
Thompson, who graduated with a degree in microbiology and immunology and global health studies in 2025, said his interest in traveling to Cambodia arose from a friend he made at the University that was from the Southeast Asian kingdom. As an aspiring physician, Thompson hopes this new cultural experience will help him be an even more compassionate doctor.
Since leaving the U, Thompson earned his EMT license and is working at the University of Florida’s Shands Hospital in its microbiology and virology lab. The Fulbright award is giving him the opportunity to travel out of the country for the first time.
“In medicine, you need to be able to put yourself in other people’s shoes and understand how to make compromises and solutions that are best for everyone as a whole,” said Thompson. “I think my experience in Cambodia with the Fulbright program will help me bridge that gap, so I never see a patient as just their diagnosis, but as a person shaped by unique experiences. It will also help me better meet patients where they are, so they feel comfortable and understood, even in their most vulnerable state.”
Labib will be taking some time between his third and fourth years of medical school to conduct research at the Cell Therapy Center in Jordan as part of his Fulbright grant.
Originally from Los Angeles, Labib’s parents were both born in Egypt, so he is also interested in learning more about his Middle Eastern roots, while expanding upon his research.
An aspiring orthopedic surgeon, Labib has worked at the UHealth Sports Medicine Institute to find alternate therapies for osteoarthritis, the fourth most common cause of disability globally. While current treaments are only symptomatic and surgery remains the endpoint, Labib's lab has been exploring extracellular vesicles, or particles released from stem cells that can be injected to restore tissue in joints plagued by osteoarthritis, particularly the knee.
The Cell Therapy Center at the University of Jordan is one of the few sites worldwide running clinical trials that use extracellular vesicles on osteoarthritic knees, so Labib is eager to extend his work there.
“At UM, we are investigating the potential of extracellular vesicles for knee osteoarthritis, so this is right in my domain,” he said. “Also, the opportunity to learn Arabic fluently and to volunteer with the Collateral Repair Project, which serves refugees from all over the Middle East in Jordan is something that drew me as well.”
Restrepo, who was born in Venezuela, transferred from Miami Dade College to the University through its honors program in his junior year. Since learning English at an early age, Restrepo’s appreciation for literature has only grown, and he hopes to earn a Ph.D. in the field and teach at the college level. Restrepo has spent almost every summer teaching underprivileged students in Breakthrough Collaborative programs in Miami and New York City and is excited to teach young students English in Madrid while also learning how to speak Spanish in a new dialect.
Restrepo said he did not expect to win the Fulbright, so when he learned he had earned the award, he was in a happy shock, along with his family.
“I’m most excited to see how different the teaching styles are from the U.S. and Spain, and what the students are like,” he said. “Teaching isn’t just relaying information but building students up as people and showing them how what you’re teaching them can be used later in life. I am interested to see the different things they emphasize in schools in Spain and the work/life balance there compared to Miami.”
Not too far away, Tieu will be doing genetic research at Helmholtz Munich’s Theis Lab, which is known widely as a pioneer in the computational biology field. The lab has created some key tools that are used to quickly analyze massive datasets, solve biological questions, and advance drug discovery, Tieu added. Ideally, Tieu will take some time off from his job at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Kellis Lab, and his role at a startup called Textile to live in Germany. He will be working on a project to evaluate the accuracy of computational models that help summarize genomic or RNA sequencing data.
“One of the greatest excitements for me is making tools, and my goal is to make a model or pioneer research that can be used by many in the future,” he said. “The research community in this field is very collaborative, so this Fulbright experience will give me the opportunity to collaborate on a grand scale.”
Gonzalez, who graduated with a degree in political science in 2025, is hoping to attend law school next fall, possibly to become an immigration lawyer, but she has always wanted to travel abroad. Since she has little experience outside the country, a Fulbright teaching experience sounded like the perfect opportunity in the year before law school.
Gonzalez is currently working as a legal assistant in South Florida but will be teaching in Spain’s Canary Islands this fall. It is a place that holds special meaning because it is where her grandparents were raised.
“I wanted to get a sense of the humanity behind immigration and all of the international aspects involved in it before law school, so I thought teaching English as a second language and getting in touch with my roots would help me long term,” she said.
Rojas, who graduated in 2023, first traveled to Brazil as an undergraduate after earning a Critical Language Scholarship, where he spent two months learning the language. Now, he hopes to continue honing his Portuguese skills while living in the country for eight months through his Fulbright grant.
He will also be teaching, something Rojas has done since graduation through Teach for America in a local middle school. In Brazil, however, he will be working with college students. He said the chance to return to the country and speak Portuguese again was a draw for him because he may want to teach the language one day in the U.S. He is one of just 10 individuals who were chosen for the Fulbright ETA grant in Brazil.
“I am exploring the idea of going back to school for a P.h.D. but don’t want to step into it until I know,” he said. “Now I can explore my options and go to Brazil to see where it takes me in terms of what I want to do in the future.”
