Humberto Fernandes, PhD

Dr. Fernandes completed his PhD studies in Mariusz Jaskolski’s Lab, Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poznań, Poland, where he trained in X-ray crystallography. He moved to Ireland to carry out postdoctoral work with Amir Khan (Trinity College Dublin), then joined Stephen Curry’s research group (Imperial College London, UK), expanding and integrating his skills in crystallography with other structural and biophysics techniques. Moving back to Poland, as a semi-independent researcher in Matthias Bochtler’s lab (Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw), he has continued using structural biology focused on a project involving DNA sequencing. He has led two scientific grants as PI, mentored two master thesis students, and published eighteen peer-reviewed papers, which collectively have been cited over 700 times. He started his career as a group leader at the ICTER in September 2020. His scientific interest focuses on understanding the mechanisms that drive cell function in health and disease at the atomic and molecular levels.

Scientific and research initiatives by Dr. Humberto Fernandes:

1. 04/2023: Project coordinator of the iNEXT-discovery project “Structural elucidation of retinol binding protein 3 (RBP3) with different retinoids” (PID: 25721) supported by iNEXT-Discovery, project number 871037, funded by the Horizon 2020 program of the European Commission.

2. 04/2023: Project coordinator of the iNEXT-discovery project “Structural characterization by X-ray crystallography of mammalian RBP3” (PID: 25420) supported by iNEXTDiscovery, project number 871037, funded by the Horizon 2020 program of the European Commission.

3. 02/2023: Award of the Minister of Education and Science for significant achievements in scientific activities for the team of Prof. Prof. Matthias Bochtler.

4. 01/2023: Project coordinator for cryo-EM beamline access project “Structural studies of Retinol-binding protein 3” (Proposal 222017) under the provision of the Polish Ministry of Education and Science project: ‘‘Support for research and development with the use of research infrastructure of the National Synchrotron Radiation Centre SOLARIS’’ under contract no. 1/SOL/2021/2.

5. 10/2022: Project coordinator of the iNEXT-discovery project “Structural studies of Retinol-binding protein 3” (PID: 23732) supported by iNEXT-Discovery, project number 871037, funded by the Horizon 2020 program of the European Commission.

6. 09/2022: Project coordinator of the iNEXT-discovery project “A protein structural biology approach to understanding morphological changes in photoreceptor outer segment after light activation: a closer look at PDE6” (PID: 22852) supported by iNEXTDiscovery, project number 871037, funded by the Horizon 2020 program of the European Commission.

7. 03/2022: Project coordinator of the iNEXT-discovery project “Retinol-binding protein 3 (RBP3): ligand binding, cooperativity, and conformational changes” (PID: 17551) supported by iNEXT-Discovery, project number 871037, funded by the Horizon 2020 program of the European Commission.

8. 02/2016 to 01/2020: Project manager and Principal investigator of the OPUS9 project “Non-catalytic domains of the RNA-guided DNA methyltransferase DRM2” from the National Science Centre Poland (NCN) (grant agreement 2015/17/B/NZ1/00861) (Budget 907200.0 PLN)

9. 10/2013 to 12/2015: Project manager and Principal investigator of the HOMING PLUS project “Plant-specific methyltransferase DNA structures” from Foundation for Polish Science (FNP) (grant agreement HOMING PLUS/2013-7/5) (Budget 327800.0 PLN)

10. 03/2015: Project coordinator of the BioStruct-X project “Non-catalytic domains of the RNA-guide DNA metyltransferase DRM2” (No. 9586) from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under BioStruct-X (grant agreement N°283570)

11. 11/2007 to 11/2009: Principal researcher in the research project “Structural and biochemical studies of plant PR-10 proteins from different sources” (No. N N204 2584 33) sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (Budget 40000.0 PLN)

12. 08/2007: RCSB PDB Poster prize awarded at 24th European Crystallographic Meeting ECM24

13. 12/2004 to 11/2007: Marie Curie Host Fellowship for Early Research Training of the EU

14. 11/2003 to 10/2004: Initiation to investigation scholarship from the project POCTI/BME/47604/2002, on the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia program: “Structural studies on the proteasome maturation factor (Ump1p) and its complex with proteasome precursors”

15. 03/2002 to 08/2002: Initiation to investigation scholarship from the project POCTI/32621/BME/2000, on the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia program: “The 20S and 26S proteasome assembly pathway in Saccharomyces cerevisiae”.