2026 SIAM Block Community Lecture Presented by Dr. Magnus Fontes

Dr. Magnus Fontes, Institut Roche and Lund University, will deliver the 2026 I. E. Block Community Lecture. He will be presenting at the 2026 SIAM Annual Meeting (AN26) which will be held July 6-10, 2026, in Cleveland, Ohio, United States.

Dr. Fontes is General Manager of Institut Roche, a Hoffmann-La Roche institute for collaborative biomedical research in France. He is also an adjunct professor of mathematics at Lund University in Lund, Sweden. He holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from Lund University, where he also earned the Docent title in 2002.

His current research focuses on modeling pathogen-immune system interactions and systems immunology, with the aim of uncovering new functional biological mechanisms that can have a direct impact on human health and the treatment of disease. His research publications span mathematics with a focus on mathematical modeling, and biomedicine with a focus on immunology and systems biology.

Dr. Fontes has extensive academic, industrial, and entrepreneurial experience, including full professorships at Lund University—where he also served as department head at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences from 2003 to 2014—as well as at Copenhagen University and Rigshospitale in Denmark. Dr. Fontes co-founded the bioinformatics company Qlucore in 2007 and later held the position of Director of Bioinformatics for the International Network of Pasteur from 2014 to 2018 and head of Systems Immunology at Genentech in the U.S. from 2018 through 2020.

Dr. Fontes regularly publishes papers in high-impact journals such as Nature Communications, Nature Immunology, Science Immunology, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Learn more about Dr. Fontes.

The I. E. Block Community Lecture is given each year at the SIAM Annual Meeting and is named in honor of I. Edward Block, a co-founder of SIAM and its first managing director. The lecture is free and open to the public to attend in person, aiming to inspire appreciation for the excitement and vitality of science.

Q: Why are you excited to deliver the lecture?

A: Trying to gain a deeper understanding of biology is a formidable challenge. I am convinced that mathematical modeling holds essential keys to unlock some of life's secrets. To get this opportunity to present some of the insights around biology that we have gained over the last decades through mathematical modeling, as well as several enigmas that puzzle us, is exciting and inspiring. I am particularly excited to hopefully have some new researchers join the quest.

Q: Could you tell us about the research that won you the award?

A: Human biology is complex. Under normal healthy conditions, a human is composed of, on average, around 3×10^13 human and bacterial cells, and 10 times as many viruses. These biological entities interact and form a hierarchy of organizational structures; molecules form cells and cells form tissues that interact and form organs, leading to an organization of organ complexes that make up an individual.

During the last decades we have been able to measure many of these interactions, with increasing depth and precision, across different hierarchical scales: molecules, cells, tissues, organs, etc. I apply mathematical modeling to try to find fundamental patterns and features hidden in the data to try to understand what type of biological mechanisms the data features might represent, and how we could ultimately use that understanding to tailor new medical treatments.

Q: What does your work mean to the public?

A: My mathematical modeling work is directly targeted toward uncovering, understanding, and presenting new biological mechanisms that can have a direct impact for drug discovery through analyzing broad and deep biological data, ultimately leading to new treatment options for patients.

Q: What does being a member of SIAM mean to you?

A: My work is, by nature, multidisciplinary and highly collaborative. SIAM is a great network to be part of, having members of very different expertise and its focus on multidisciplinary collaboration.

How to Attend

The general public is encouraged to attend Dr. Fontes' presentation in person. For those unable to join us in Cleveland, SIAM will livestream the talk on YouTube, and upload the recording following the event. Learn more about AN26.

Block lectures are intended to reach out as broadly as possible to students, teachers, and members of the local community, as well as to SIAM members, researchers, and practitioners in fields related to applied and computational mathematics. Ideas for future presenters? Suggest them here.