Conversations with Young Scientist SDGs Award winners

"Our team uses 'the power of machines' to accelerate biological and medical discoveries — specifically, using AI to design new antibiotics to fight bacterial infections that are already difficult to treat today," said Cesar de la Fuente. He has long worked at the intersection of artificial intelligence, engineering and biology, focusing on AI-driven antibiotic discovery, antimicrobial peptide design, antibiotic resistance, and the diagnosis and treatment of infectious diseases. His team was among the first to develop AI-designed antibiotics that show efficacy in animals, and used machine learning to systematically mine novel antimicrobial molecules from the human microbiome, proteomes and the sequences of extinct organisms. "Countless people die from drug-resistant infections every year, and that number could double by 2050. Antibiotics are not ordinary medicines — they are one of humanity's last lines of defense against infection," he said. AI has compressed the time needed to discover candidate molecules from "years" to "hours." "We are in a race against evolution."

Facing the AI wave, he is unequivocal: embrace AI, but do not surrender to it. "AI is a double-edged sword. It will replace jobs, but it will also create new ones. But never outsource critical thinking to a model." He often tells his students two things: be sure to learn to use AI tools well; and always retain the ability to ask complex questions. "In the future, most people may hand their thinking over to models, so 'how to think' matters more than any specific skill."