About Fernanda

Fernanda was born in Santiago, Chile. She completed undergraduate and graduate studies at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC). Her PhD research focused on the formulation of theoretical frameworks for characterising chemical processes employing Density Functional Theory (DFT) and hybrid Quantum Mechanics/Molecular Mechanics (QM/MM) approaches.

After graduation, she joined the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology at Uppsala University, where she pursued training in biomolecular modelling. In 2015, she moved to the University of Oxford with a Royal Society Newton Fellowship, working in the area of computational organic chemistry. She then joined the School of Chemistry at Edinburgh with a Chancellor’s Fellowship before returning to Oxford in 2018 as an Associate Professor in Chemistry. 

Throughout her career, Fernanda has received various accolades, including the L'Oreal-UNESCO Women in Science award (2009), Pre-doctoral Fulbright scholarship (2010), Marie Curie Career Grant (2015, decline in lieu of the Newton Fellowship), MGMS Frank Blaney Award(2020), OpenEye Outstanding Junior Faculty Award (2021), Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize (2021), Novartis Early Career Award in Chemistry (2022) and Finalist in Chemical Sciences for the 2024 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the UK. Her team develops computational methods to understand (bio)chemical reactivity and guide molecular design.

Awards and Honours

2024 Finalist in Chemical Sciences for the 2024 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the UK

2022 Novartis Early Career Award in Chemistry

2021 Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize, Royal Society of Chemistry

2021 OpenEye Outstanding Junior Faculty Award, ACS COMP Division

2020 MGMS Frank Blaney Award. Molecular Graphics and Modelling Society, UK 

2017-2021 Chancellor’s Fellowship, University of Edinburgh, UK.

2016-2018 Swedish Research Council (VR) Marie Sklodowska Curie International Career Grant. Declined in favour of Newton Fellowship.

2015-2017 Newton International Fellowship at the University of Oxford. Royal Society, UK.

2015 Congress Bursary to Attend the 10th European Biophysics Congress (EBSA 2015). Dresden, Germany.

2014 Best Poster Award. FemEx-Oslo congress. Oslo, Norway. Sponsored by the International Journal of Quantum Chemistry.

2014 Junior Research Fellow. 1+1 Fellowship Scheme. Biophysical Sciences Institute (BSI), Durham University, UK.

2013 Invitation as a young researcher to the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings. Fellowship from Bert and Kuggie Vallee Foundation. Lindau, Germany.

2008-2012 Scholarship for Doctoral Studies National Committee of Investigation in Science and Technology (CONICYT), Chile.

2010-2011 Fulbright Visiting Scholar. Prof. Weitao Yang´s group, Department of Chemistry, Duke University, USA.

2011 Scholarship to Attend IPAM Workshop “Physical Frameworks for Sampling Chemical Compound Space”. University of California, Los Angeles, USA.

2009 Distinction Award Best Chemistry PhD student of the Year. Department of Chemistry, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

2009 Women in Science Award. L′Oreal-UNESCO, Chile.

2005-2007 Fellowship for Undergraduate Studies. Juan Pablo II Foundation, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile.

2004-2007 Four times awarded the Annual Distinction Award for Undergraduate Studies. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

Invited Talks (since 2019)

2024

  • (September) Invited Lecture: Almlöf-Gropen Lecture at the Hylleraas Centre, Oslo/Tromso, Norway

  • (July) Invited Speaker at Frontiers of Computational Reaction Prediction (CECAM meeting) Chicago, USA

  • (July) Invited lecture at 9th EuChemS Chemistry Congress, Dublin, Ireland

  • (June) Invited plenary lecture at Electronic Structure: Principles and Applications (ESPA), Tarragona, Spain

  • (May) Invited Speaker at Chemical Compound Space Conference 2024, Heidelberg, Germany

  • (May) Invited Speaker at Free Energy Workshop 2024, Leiden, The Netherlands

  • (May) Keynote speaker at Girona Seminar 2024 dedicated to Supramolecular Chemistry

  • (March) Chemistry Departmental Colloquia at the University of Sheffield, UK

2023

  • (September) Invited colloquium speaker at HITS Heidelberg, Germany

  • (September) NECA Symposium. Novartis, Basel, Switzerland

  • (September) iCAS Meeting. University of Bath, UK

  • (September) GAP / (m)ACE Developers and Users Meeting 2023, Warwick, UK.

  • (June) Invited speaker at Physical Organic Gordon Research Conference. Holderness, USA

  • (May) Chemistry Departmental Colloquia at the University of Geneva, Switzerland

  • (April) Chemistry Departmental Colloquia at the University of Birmingham, UK

  • (April) Chemistry Departmental Colloquia at the University of Cambridge, UK

  • (March) Chemistry Departmental Colloquia at the University of Nottingham, UK

  • (April-May) RSC prize tour at the Universities of Liverpool, Manchester and Edinburgh, UK

2022

  • (December) Invited speaker at RSC Macrocyclic and Supramolecular Chemistry Meeting. Nottingham, UK

  • (June) Invited speaker at XXXVIII biennial meeting, Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry. Granada, Spain

    (June) Reaction Mechanisms Conference, Colorado, USA

  • (May) Beilstein Bozen Symposium 2022 - Simulation and AI in the Future of Science, Rudesheim, Germany

  • (April) ICMS@Oxford workshop on Advances in N-body Computations, University of Oxford, UK

  • (March) ACS Spring 2022 National Meeting (virtual)

  • (February) Theory seminar at the Department of Chemistry, University of Oxford, UK

  • (January) Seminar at the Faculty of Chemistry, Pontificia Universidad Catolica, Chile

2021

October–December

  • Seminar at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Loyola University Chicago, USA (virtual)

  • Department of Chemistry seminar, Carnegie Mellon University, USA (virtual)

  • WCPM/HetSys Seminar, Warwick University

  • Computational chemistry group at BASF, Germany (virtual)

  • Quantum Chemistry group at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (virtual)

  • 27th SCI Annual Review Meeting – Hot Topics in Organic Chemistry

  • ELLIS Machine Learning for Molecule Discovery Workshop (virtual)

July–September

  • Machine learning in Physics discussion group (MLDG), University of Cambridge (virtual)

  • VISTA Symposium on Artificial-Intelligence and Data-Science assisted Synthesis (virtual)

  • Breaking Barriers Through Chemistry Conference

  • ACS Fall 2021 National meeting (virtual)

  • Seminar series at Pontifica Universidad Catolica de Chile, Chile (virtual)

  • LatinXChem Webinar series (virtual)

  • Molecular Graphics and Modelling Society meeting (virtual)

  • 4th RSC-BMCS / RSC-CICAG Artificial Intelligence in Chemistry (virtual) 

April–June

  • Molecular Electronic Structure Group, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil. (virtual)

  • Young Chemists 2021, Imperial College London, UK (virtual)

  • CompChemURG: How Diversity Enriches Us (virtual)

January–March

  • FQT group (seminar to undergraduate and Master students), Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México, Mexico (virtual)

  • Departmental Seminar, University of Cambridge (virtual)

  • Master student’s seminar, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (virtual)

  • Departmental Seminar, Newcastle University(virtual)

  • 4th Materials & Computational Chemistry Research Day, University of Strathclyde, UK (virtual)

2020

July–December

  • GSK Stevenage(virtual)

  • University of Leeds (virtual)

  • Departmental Seminar, ICIQ. Barcelona, Spain (virtual)

  • Ruhr University Bochum and TU-Dortmund, Germany (virtual)

  • Departmental Seminar, University of St Andrews (virtual)

  • Departmental seminar, University of Sussex (virtual)

  • IBM Zurich (virtual)

January–June

  • Southwest Regional Meeting of the RSC Organic Division. Oxford, UK

  • Queen Mary College. London, UK

  • AI for Reaction Outcome and Synthetic Route Prediction, Bristol, UK

  • Departmental Seminar, University of York (virtual)

  • AstraZeneca – Sweden/UK Computational team (virtual)

2019

July–December

  • Non-covalent Interactions CECAM Meeting. Paris, France

  • Gregynog Synthesis meeting. Gregynog, UK

January–June

  • Physics@Veldhoven, The Netherlands

  • Computational Molecular Science 2019. Warwick, UK

  • 20th RSC Lakeland Heterocyclic Symposium. Grasmere, UK

  • 2nd Chem East Organic Symposium. University of East Anglia, UK

  • Molecular Interactions. SCI’s Young Chemists Panel. Cambridge, UK

Teaching

SBM CDT CompChem Module (University of Oxford, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022)

VALBO2018 (Marseille, France, 27th-28th of June, 2018)

Introduction to Computational Chemistry (SUPACCH, November 2017)

Lecture TCCM 2016 (Porto, Portugal)