Ph.D. Defense Introduces a New AI Platform for Bioactive Peptide Discovery

The BioSys Lab proudly celebrates the Ph.D. defense of **Frederico Chaves Carvalho**, completed in the Graduate Program in Computer Science at UFMG. His dissertation presents **EvoPepFold**, a computational platform that integrates Artificial Intelligence, evolutionary algorithms, and molecular modeling to accelerate the discovery and design of bioactive peptides.

The dissertation's main contribution is the development of a unified framework that combines **Genetic Algorithms**, **AlphaFold2-Multimer**, **Rosetta**, and **molecular dynamics simulations** to automate the rational design and optimization of peptides. The platform efficiently explores the vast peptide sequence space, identifying promising candidates for a wide range of biotechnological applications.

As a proof of concept, EvoPepFold was applied to the design of peptides targeting the **SARS-CoV-2 main protease**, identifying candidates with predicted binding affinity superior to that of reference peptides. Its architecture is fully generalizable and can be applied to the discovery of peptides for healthcare, biotechnology, agribusiness, cosmetics, and functional foods.

The dissertation was supervised by **Prof. Raquel Cardoso de Melo-Minardi** and co-supervised by **Dr. Diego Mariano**, and evaluated by a committee of experts from leading Brazilian institutions.

We congratulate **Dr. Frederico Chaves Carvalho** on this outstanding achievement and for his significant contribution to the development of Artificial Intelligence technologies for Bioinformatics. EvoPepFold reinforces LBS's mission to develop innovative computational methods that accelerate scientific discovery and create solutions with real-world impact.