José Rafael Penadés

Professor José Rafael Penadés is a Professor at the Department of Infectious Disease, Imperial College London, and a Lecturer at CEU Cardenal Herrera University. His work focuses on bacterial gene transfer mechanisms, antimicrobial resistance, and leveraging AI to accelerate scientific discovery. He leads a team that tested Google’s AI co-scientist platform, which successfully generated hypotheses matching his group’s unpublished research on viral satellites and bacterial species boundaries.

His research explores how satellite viruses use viral tails to infect diverse bacterial species, a mechanism critical for bacterial evolution and antibiotic resistance. Collaborations include Imperial College, CEU UCH, and the Instituto de Biomedicina de Valencia (IBV).

Prof Penadés emphasizes AI’s potential to revolutionize hypothesis generation, reducing experimental timelines and addressing global healthcare challenges like antimicrobial resistance. The team’s findings on chimeric infective particles and AI-driven research were published in a high-impact pre-print study.