Fernando is a recipient of the 2015 Scripps CHAVI-ID Young Investigator Award for outstanding contributions to the development of an anti-HIV-1 vaccine deploying a structure-guided design approach. His research career started when he was awarded an international PhD fellowship to join the University of Barcelona, Spain, in 2004. After finishing his PhD, he moved to the Institute of Cancer Research in London, UK, where he started his postdoctoral research to work on proteins involved in the DNA Repair and how to use them as oncologic targets. In 2012, he joined the Professor Ian Wilson’s lab at The Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California, where he became an expert in the molecular details that mediate the antibody-protein interactions such as the glycoprotein-gp160 located on the surface of the HIV-1 trimer.

In 2016 Fernando moves to Amgen to build a first-in-class Protein Engineering Team and deliver an industry leading workflow on Multispecific Antibodies.

Almost 6 years later, in 2021, Fernando joined Gilead as Director in Protein Therapeutics to transform Protein Sciences into the Next Gen Biologics Engineering (NGBE) and further propel Biologics as a leading modality at Gilead.