de la Fuente honored for AI research
César de la Fuente has been selected as a 2026 awardee of the University of Pennsylvania’s Discovering the Future of AI program. The award supports research advancing artificial intelligence across disciplines and includes funding to accelerate the discovery of novel therapeutic solutions to address growing health threats such as antimicrobial resistance (AMR). The award will support ApexMol, an agentic 3D structure–informed large language model for creating new biomolecules.
de la Fuente is a presidential associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania. His lab leverages AI and machine learning to accelerate discovery in biology and medicine, with a particular focus on peptide design and antibiotics. The group pioneered a computer-designed antibiotic that proved effective in preclinical animal models, helping define AI-driven antibiotic discovery as an emerging field. They also mine biological data across the tree of life — including human proteomes, microbial genomes, metagenomes and extinct species — to rapidly identify antimicrobial molecules and have pioneered molecular de-extinction by discovering compounds from ancient species and reprogramming venom-derived peptides into antibiotics.
Alongside this honor, de la Fuente was recently awarded Spain’s XXXI Rafael Hervada Prize for biomedical research in recognition of AI algorithms capable of discovering antibiotics in record time. The award highlights his work identifying compounds from extinct species to combat modern infections and reflects the global impact of his research.
“Today, thanks to AI, we can discover molecules that never existed in nature,” de la Fuente said upon receiving the award in Galicia, Spain.
de la Fuente has received numerous honors, including the American Society of Microbiology’s Award for Early Career Basic Research, the Fleming Prize, the Miklos Bondanszky Award and the Princess of Girona Prize. He is also a member of the Royal Academy of Pharmacology, a National Academy of Medicine’s Emerging Leaders in Health and Medicine Scholar and a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.
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