PHILADELPHIA, PA — Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics selected mathematician and biomedical researcher Magnus Fontes to deliver its 2026 I. E. Block Community Lecture, spotlighting the growing role of mathematical modeling in drug discovery, immunology, and disease research.
Fontes, general manager of Institut Roche in France and adjunct professor of mathematics at Lund University, will present during the 2026 SIAM Annual Meeting scheduled for July 6 through July 10 in Cleveland, Ohio.
The annual lecture, hosted by SIAM and named after co-founder I. Edward Block, is designed to connect applied mathematics research with broader public and scientific audiences.
Fontes’ research focuses on modeling interactions between pathogens and the immune system, an area increasingly tied to pharmaceutical development, systems biology, and data-driven medicine. His work seeks to identify biological mechanisms that could improve disease treatment and drug development.
The selection also reflects continued investment across the pharmaceutical industry in computational biology and artificial intelligence-driven research tools aimed at accelerating therapeutic discovery.
Fontes has held academic leadership roles at Lund University, Copenhagen University, and Rigshospitalet in Denmark. He also co-founded bioinformatics company Qlucore and previously led systems immunology work at Genentech in the United States.
His published research has appeared in journals including Nature Communications, Nature Immunology, Science Immunology, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In remarks released alongside the announcement, Fontes described mathematical modeling as central to understanding increasingly complex biological data.
“My mathematical modeling work is directly targeted toward uncovering, understanding, and presenting new biological mechanisms that can have a direct impact for drug discovery,” Fontes stated.
The lecture will be open to the public and livestreamed o YouTube, according to SIAM.
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