Computational biology applied to drug discovery and cancer immunotherapy. Invited talk at Universidade do Vale do Taquari (Univates), as part of the course on Advanced Topics in Medicine and Health Science. Lajeado, RS, Brazil (via Zoom). August 21, 2025.
HLA-Arena: Integrating structural bioinformatics on the design of personalized immunotherapies. Invited talk at the Postgraduate Program in Genetics and Molecular Biology of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (PPGBM/UFRG). Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil. August 14, 2025.
Artificial intelligence powered biomedical research. Invited talk at the The Advanced Technology and Medical Research Exploration, a Biomedical Research Incubator program by the Center for Nuclear Receptors of the University of Houston, and the Lester and Sue Smith Breast Center of the Baylor College of Medicine. Houston, TX, US. July 15, 2025.
HLA-Arena: Enabling structure-guided pipelines for personalized cancer immunotherapy design. Invited talk at the NCI intramural webinar series, for the Computational Genomics and Bioinformatics Branch (CGBB) of the NCI’s Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology (CBIIT). Bethesda, MD, US (via Webex; recording). April 30, 2025. Full recording available here.
“Novel computational approaches for immunotherapy design”. Hands-on workshop for graduate students of the Postgraduate Program in Molecular and Cell Biology at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (PPGBCM/UFRGS). Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil. May 2025.
“ML-based consensus scoring for optimized peptide-ligand virtual screening”. Invited talk at the Drug Discovery Institute (DDI) of the University of Houston. Houston, TX, US. April 7, 2025.
“AI and structural bioinformatics methods for drug discovery”. Lecture in the class “Drug Design and Discovery” (PCOL6345), College of Pharmacy, University of Houston. Houston, TX, US. April 2-4, 2025.
“AI and structural bioinformatics methods for drug discovery”. Lecture in the class “Technologies for Cancer Drug Discovery & Development” (GS-CC-6401), offered jointly by Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Houston. Houston, TX, US. March 28, 2025.
“Improving the Design of Immunotherapies”. Invited talk for the Innovative Research Talk series of the HEALTH Center for Addictions Research and Cancer Prevention (HEALTH-RCMI). Houston (via Zoom), TX, US. March 20, 2025.
“Improving the design of immunotherapies for underrepresented minorities”. Invited talk at the meeting of the Community Research Advisory Board (CRAB), in partnership with HEALTH-RCMI. Houston (via Zoom), TX, US. March 4, 2025.
Congrats to Finn Beruldsen on winning a Travel Award for the NIH/NCI’s ITCR Annual Meeting (Rockville, Maryland) (2025)!
Congrats to Finn Beruldsen on winning the NSM Graduate Conference Travel Fellowship from the NSM College (UH, Houston) (2025)!
Congrats to Finn Beruldsen on winning a Student Travel Award from the Department of Biology and Biochemistry (UH, Houston) (2025)!
Congrats to Finn Beruldsen on winning the Distinguished Graduate Student Leadership Award (UH, Houston) (2025)!
Congrats to Jaila Lewis on winning the Cullen Fellowship Travel Grant from UH’s Graduate School (2025)!
Congrats to Jaila Lewis on winning a Student Travel Award from the Department of Biology and Biochemistry (UH, Houston) (2025)!
Congrats to Jaila Lewis on winning the Excellence in Mentorship Award from the Bioscience Graduate Society (UH, Houston) (2025)!
“Novel cancer immunoinformatics pipelines to advance personalized T-cell-based immunotherapies”. Invited talk at the GCC’s Keck Seminar. Houston, TX, US. November 15, 2024.
“Improving the design of immunotherapies for underrepresented minorities”. Invited talk at the meeting of the Community Research Advisory Board (CRAB), in partnership with HEALTH-RCMI. Houston (via Zoom), TX, US. May 7, 2024.
“From Gauchos to Cowboys: My academic path to the University of Houston”. Invited talk at the Seminars of the Post-Graduate Program in Cellular and Molecular Biology (PPGBCM), Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (CBiot/UFRGS/Brazil). Porto Alegre (via Zoom), RS, Brazil. April 26, 2024.
“Structural Modeling and Dynamic Contact Analysis of TCRpHLA Complexes”. Invited talk at the GCC 4th Annual Future of Immunology Symposium (IMM24), by the GCC Immunology Consortium. Houston, TX, US. April 9, 2024.
“AI and structural bioinformatics methods for drug discovery”. Lecture in the class “Technologies for Cancer Drug Discovery & Development” (GS-CC-6401), offered jointly by Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Houston. Houston, TX, US. February 2, 2024.
I became an Editorial Board Member for Discover Immunity (Springer).
2023
Congrats to Jayla Lewis on winning Best Poster award at the 50th Annual NDiSTEM Conference for SACNAS (Portland, Oregon) (2023)!
Congrats to Martiela Freitas on her acceptance to the HEALTH-RCMI Professional Development Program (UH, Houston) (2023)!
Congrats to Sae Hee Choi on winning Best Poster award at the 14th Annual Graduate Student Symposium (UH, Houston) (2023)!
“iTECH-STEM”. Hands-on Biotechnology Summer Camp on protein visualization, molecular docking and virtual screening, for graduate and undergraduate students at the Science and Engineering Research Center of the University of Houston. Houston, TX. June 2023 (4 weeks).
Congrats to Jaila Lewis on winning Best Poster award at the CNRCS Annual Research Symposium (UH, Houston) (2022)!
Congrats to Finn Beruldsen on winning the University of Houston Presidential Fellowship (2022)!
“iTECH-STEM”. Hands-on Biotechnology Summer Camp on protein visualization, molecular docking and virtual screening, for graduate and undergraduate students at the Science and Engineering Research Center of the University of Houston. Houston, TX. June 2022 (2 weeks).
I served as Reviewer Editor for Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences, section Biological Modeling and Simulation (2022–2023).
2021
My work with Didier Devaurs and Lydia Kavraki on the use of DINC for immunotherapy applications feaured as one of three research projects “Bolstering biomedicine,” at the CASC (Coalition for Academic Scientific Computation) 2021 brochure: “Science at full speed”.
I will give a talk at the seminar series of the Graduate Program in Cellular and Molecular Biology of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (PPGBCM/UFRGS), in March 12.
We launch a webserver for ensemble docking with SARS-CoV-2 proteins, DINC-COVID, allowing users to account for receptor flexibility while testing potential drug-inhibitors. A manuscript describing our methods is currently under review, but a preprint version is available on BioRxiv.
I gave a talk titled “Advancing immunotherapy through structure-based computational analyses” at the Annual Symposioum of the Center for Nuclear Receptor and Cell Signaling (CNRSC). Houston/ZOOM, TX. January 2021.
I started as an Assistant Professor of Computational Biology at the Department of Biology and Biochemistry of the University of Houston. I am also selecting PhD students and Postdocs to work on my team (more here).
2020
Our work was advertised at the Rice University News and Media Relations webpage (see here).
I was selected to represent the CCBTP program during the 30th Annual Keck Research Conference (ARC2020).
I was one of receipients of the 2020 Immuno-Oncology Young Investigators’ Forum (IOYIF) PhD Postdoc Awards.
I was awarded the SCI Gold Oral Presentation Award at the 6th Annual SCI Summer Research Colloquium, hosted by the Applied Physics Program of Rice University.
I wrote about the challenge of misinformation and fake news during the COVID-19 epidemics, for the Brazilian Society of Immunology Blog. The text (in Portuguese) can be found here.
I was interviewed by a local news website from my hometown (Alegrete Tudo), about my experience under quarentine in the USA, and what could Brazil learn from the USA response to COVID-19.
My research, in collaboration with Dr. Didier Devaurs, was featured in a publication at the website of the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC). The piece describes our use of the Comet supercomputer, at SDSC, to test the use of our meta-docking method (DINC) for predicting the binding modes of large ligands. The long-term goal of this project is to enable applications for personalized cancer immunotherapy.
I wrote an update on the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic for the Brazilian Society of Immunology Blog. The text (in Portuguese) can be found here. Updated information on the number of confirmed cases/deaths for Brazil can be found here, and worldwide here.
My lastest abstract, titled “Sequence-based retrieval of potential targets for off-target toxicity in cancer immunotherapy”, was selected for poster presentation at the AMIA 2020 Informatics Summit.
2019
I gave a talk titled “Enabling structure-based data-driven selection of targets for cancer immunotherapy” at the Seventeenth Annual Rocky Mountain Bioinformatics Conference (Rocky19), a meeting of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB). Dec 7, 2019, Aspen/Snowmass, CO.
I gave a tutorial on “Current methods and open challenges for structural modeling in cancer immunotherapy” at the First International Symposium on Mathematical and Computational Oncology (ISMCO 2019). October 14, 2019 at Lake Tahoe, Nevada, USA.
I gave a talk titled “Large-scale modeling of class I peptide-HLA complexes using APE-Gen” at the First International Symposium on Mathematical and Computational Oncology (ISMCO 2019). October 15, 2019 at Lake Tahoe, Nevada, USA.
I gave a talk titled “Aplications of structural bioinformatics to cancer immunotherapy” at the XXII Semana Acadêmica da Biologia, Passo Fundo University, Brazil, on September 17, 2019.
I was seleted with honorable mention to be a part of the School of Engineering’s Future Faculty Fellows Program, at Rice University (Houston, TX). The goal of the program is to help fellows to become more competitive for faculty positions, by providing support in preparing all elements of the faculty application and interview.
I was selected to be a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Computational Cancer Biology Training Program (CCBTP). This fellowship is funded by the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT), grant number RP170593. The CCBTP is one of the training programs of the Gulf Coast Consortia for Quantitative Biomedical Sciences (GCC).
