The Golden Room of the Copacabana Palace, in Rio de Janeiro, staged the magnificent awards ceremony of the L’Oréal-Unesco-ABC Prize for Women of Science 2009, which awarded seven young scientists from several different regions of Brazil, chosen among more than 540 participants.

Studying Schizophrenia
The researcher from the Universidade do Extremo Sul Catarinense, Alexandra Ioppi Zugno develops behavioral and biochemical studies to understand the psychiatric disorders more thoroughly.

Cleaning the contaminated soils
The chemist Annelise Casellato, from UFRJ, was chosen to receive the prize for the Project which seeks to synthesize compounds capable of acting on the degradation of pesticides.

Focusing on the Stars
Elysandra Figueredo, from USP, seeks to study the physical processes involved in the constitution of this category of stars, aiming towards understanding what happens within the stellar cocoons.

An alternative for the treatment of cystitis
The work of the scientist Flavia Carla Meotti, from UFSC, has the objective of studying treatments for the inflammatory and or infectious diseases of the bladder.

Trying to understand the aging of the brain
The medical pathologist Lea Tenenholz Grinberg, from USP, received the prize for her project about vascular dementia, a preventable disease which can be a lot more common than one imagines.

Unraveling bipolar disorders in children and youngsters
Sheila Cavalcante Caetano, from USP, was awarded for her genetic analysis of the dopaminergic system in families of children with mood bipolar disorder.

Cares for the pregnant women
The biomedical Valeria Cristina Sandrim, researcher of the Santa Casa de Belo Horizonte, studies how factors released from the placenta can lead to preeclampsia.