César de la Fuente is a Presidential Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where he leads the Machine Biology Group. He completed postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and earned a PhD from the University of British Columbia (UBC). 

His research goal is to use the power of machines to accelerate discoveries in biology and medicine. Notably, he pioneered the development of the first computer-designed antibiotic with efficacy in animal models, demonstrating the application of AI for antibiotic discovery and helping launch this emerging field. His lab is at the forefront of developing computational methods to mine the world’s biological information digitally, leading to the identification of over a million new antimicrobial compounds. It is estimated that the work of de la Fuente and collaborators have multiplied the speed of antibiotic discovery by a factor of 3.5 million, saving more than a million years of research and reducing what once took decades of collective work to just hours. 

De la Fuente has won more than 80 awards, including the Princess of Girona Prize, appeared as an invited speaker at more than 300 talks, is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and is a National Academy of Medicine Emerging Leader. He has published over 170 peer-reviewed papers in top-tier journals such as Cell, Science, Cell Host Microbe, Nature Biomedical Engineering, and PNAS. De la Fuente has been named a Sloan Fellow for his contributions to the field of chemistry.