Scientific Program

Protein Science in the Post-AlphaFold Era: New Challenges – New Paradigms

Thursday 7 May 2026

15:00 - 18:00 Registration

18:50 – 19:00 Opening:

Jan Konvalinka IOCB Prague director

Jiří Vondrášek IOCB Prague
Mikael Oliveberg Stockholm University
Michele Vendruscolo University of Cambridge

Opening Session: Where Do We Go from Here?
Chair: Valerie Daggett - University of Washington, USA

Opening Keynote (19:00 - 20:00)

19:00 - 20:00 David Baker - University of Washington, USA
Protein design using deep learning

20:00 – 20:45 Michele Vendruscolo, University of Cambridge, UK
Drug design for undruggable targets using AI

20:45 - 22:30 Welcome Reception / Welcome Drink

Friday 8 May 2026

BLOCK 1: AlphaFold Independent – The Physics and Evolution of Protein Folding
Chair: Ellinor Haglund - University Hawaii, USA

08:30 - 09:15 Eugene Shakhnovich - University of Harvard, USA
Protein evolution with and without chaperones
09:15 - 10:00 Patricia Clark - University of Notre Dame, USA
Silent No More: Synonymous Substitutions Regulate Protein Folding and Gene Expression in E. coli
10:00 - 10:30 Gabor Erdos - ELU Budapest, HU
Zero-Shot Prediction of Thermodynamic Properties of Proteins

10:30 - 11:00 Coffee break

11:00 - 11:45 Stephen Fried - John Hopkins University, USA
Protein Folding in the AI Era: What’s Left to Discover
11:45 - 12:25 Ayala Shiber - Israel Institute of Technology, IL
Evolution of Protein Folding and Assembly Pathways: Deciphering the Dynamics of Divergent Co-translational Assembly Pathways, in Atomic Resolution
12:25 - 13:00 Iva Pritisanac - Helmholtz Munich, Institute of Computational Biology, DE
A functional map of the human intrinsically disordered proteome

13:00 - 14:30 Lunch Break

BLOCK 2: After AlphaFold – What Machines Know and What They Don’t
Chair: Michele Vendruscolo - University of Cambridge, UK

14:30 - 15:10 Nikolay Dokholyan - University of Virginia, USA
Early Molecular Events in Neurodegeneration
15:10 - 15:50 George Makhatadze - Rensealler Polytechnic Institute, USA
Let’s change the title to “Electrostatics in the Age of AI Structure Prediction"
15:50 - 16:20 Alena Khmelinskaia - Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, DE
Function-driven design of protein assemblies

16:20 - 16:50 Coffee break

16:50 - 17:30 Sameer Velankar - EMBL-EBI, UK
When Proteins Became Predictable: AlphaFold and the Transformation of Biology
17:30 - 18:10 Gennady Verkhivker - Chapman University, USA
Predicting Allostery in the AI Era: Protein Language Models, Agents and Biophysics
18:10 - 18:40 Ilaria Piazza - Stockholm University, SE
Protein structures in context with proteome-wide biophysics

18:40 - 20:00 Supper
19:00 - 23:00 Poster session

Saturday 9 May 2026

BLOCK 3: Designing Life – Proteins, Chemistry and New Functions
Chair: Agnes-Toth Petroczy - Max Planck Institute, DE

09:00 - 09:45 Valerie Daggett - University of Washington, USA
From discovery to design: Toward early detection and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease
09:45 - 10:30 Lukasz Joachimiak - University of Texas, USA
Decoding Structural Polymorphism of Tau Amyloids in Disease

10:30 - 11:00 Coffee Break

11:00 – 11:30 Ahrum Son - Scripps Research Institute, USA
Protein Structural Changes in Alzheimer’s Disease: From Mouse Tissue to Human Blood
11:30 – 12:15 Basile Wicky - ETH Zürich, CH
Interfacing with biology using protein design
12:15 - 12:45 Ellinor Haglund - University Hawaii, USA
Structural plasticity in chemokines

12:45 - 14:15 Lunch Break

BLOCK 4: Beyond the Structure – Disorder, Motion and the Full Picture
Chair: Mikael Oliveberg - Stockholm University, SE

14:15 - 14:55 Agnes Toth-Petroczy - Max Planck Institute, Dresden, DE
Systems biology of disordered proteins and biomolecular condensates
14:55 - 15:30 Tiffany J. Callahan - Manas AI, USA
From Protein Conformational Landscapes to Cellular States
15:30 - 16:00 Tomas Pluskal - IOCB Prague, CZ
Decoding the chemical universe of plants

16:00 - 16:30 Coffee Break

16:30 - 17:15 Andrea Soranno - Washington University in St. Louis, USA
Single-molecule spectroscopy of disordered regions and nucleic acids in bacterial transcription
17:15 - 18:00 Sebastian Hiller - University Basel, CH
Integrative structural biology with solution NMR spectroscopy

18:00 - 18:30 Closing Remarks and Discussion
19:30 - 22:00 Conference dinner

Sunday 10 May 2026

Departures