Rubén Sanchez-Garcia

Rubén Sánchez-García is an Assistant Professor of the Computer Science Department at IE University since 2025, where he leads a research group on deep learning for cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and structure-based drug discovery. He holds a BSc in Biotechnology, a BSc in Computer Science and an MSc in Biophysics. In 2020 he completed his PhD at the Spanish National Centre for Biotechnology (CNB-CSIC) and the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM), under the supervision of Professor José María Carazo and Dr. Joan Segura. He then joined the Department of Statistics at the University of Oxford as a postdoctoral researcher in the Oxford Protein Informatics Group led by Professor Charlotte Deane, working on artificial intelligence for drug discovery—including two years with the XChem platform on AI for fragment-based drug discovery—and held a Sustaining Innovation Postdoctoral position at Astex Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge, UK, applying machine learning to cryo-EM in drug discovery.

His research focuses on machine learning algorithms for structural biology, with special emphasis on deep learning methods for cryo-EM image processing and structure-based drug discovery. Dr. Sánchez-García has co-authored more than 30 peer-reviewed publications and developed several widely used tools and benchmarks, including DeepEMhancer, BIPSPI, MicrographCleaner and CESPED, and his work has been cited more than 1,800 times.

Corporate Experience

• Sustaining Innovation Postdoctoral Researcher, Astex Pharmaceuticals, Cambridge, UK, 2022–2024

Academic Experience

• Assistant Professor, Computer Science Department, IE University, Spain, 2025–present
• Senior Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Statistics, University of Oxford, UK, 2022–2024
• Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Statistics, University of Oxford, UK, 2020–2022
• Pre-doctoral Researcher and Research Technician, Spanish National Centre for Biotechnology (CNB-CSIC), Madrid, Spain, 2015–2020

Academic Background

• Ph.D. in Molecular Biosciences (Computational Biology), Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain, 2020
• MSc in Physics of Condensed Matter and Biological Systems (Biophysics), Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain, 2015
• B.Sc. in Computer Science, UNED, Spain, 2020
• Licenciatura (long B.Sc.) in Biotechnology, Universidad de León, Spain, 2013