International conference brings 20 top researchers and more than 60 participants to Prague to discuss the future of protein science in the era of artificial intelligence

PRAGUE — More than sixty researchers from around the world gathered in Prague from 7 to 10 May 2026 for Prague Protein Spring 2026 (PPS 2026), one of Europe’s most prominent meetings in protein science. This year’s edition, themed “Protein Science in the Post-AlphaFold Era: New Challenges – New Paradigms”, was opened by the 2024 Nobel laureate in Chemistry David Baker, who delivered the keynote lecture on computational protein design.

The conference was jointly organized by the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences (IOCB Prague) and the Czech national node of the European life-sciences infrastructure ELIXIR CZ. It brought together twenty invited speakers from leading research institutions in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, Israel, Hungary and the Czech Republic, alongside a vibrant community of PhD students and early-career scientists.

A keynote from a Nobel laureate

The conference opened on Thursday evening with a keynote lecture by Professor David Baker (University of Washington, Director of the Institute for Protein Design), who in 2024 received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his pioneering work in computational protein design. His lecture, “Protein design using deep learning”, illustrated how artificial intelligence is taking the field beyond predicting natural proteins towards engineering entirely new ones with custom functions — for medicine, materials and biotechnology.

Baker was followed by Professor Michele Vendruscolo of the University of Cambridge, who presented AI-driven approaches to drug design for traditionally “undruggable” targets.

Four scientific sessions on what comes after AlphaFold

The scientific program was structured around four thematic blocks mapping out the new landscape of protein research after the AlphaFold revolution. The first block, “AlphaFold Independent: The Physics and Evolution of Protein Folding”, revisited the fundamental physics and evolutionary biology of folding, with contributions from Eugene Shakhnovich (Harvard), Patricia Clark (University of Notre Dame) and Stephen Fried (Johns Hopkins University), among others.

The second block, “After AlphaFold: What Machines Know and What They Don’t”, examined the limits of current AI models and the biology that still eludes them. Talks ranged from early molecular events in neurodegeneration (Nikolay Dokholyan, University of Virginia) and electrostatics in the AI era (George Makhatadze, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) to AlphaFold’s broader transformation of biology (Sameer Velankar, EMBL-EBI).

Saturday’s sessions turned to design and dynamics. “Designing Life: Proteins, Chemistry and New Functions” featured Lukasz Joachimiak (University of Texas) on the structural polymorphism of tau amyloids in disease and Basile Wicky (ETH Zürich) on de novo protein design as a way of interfacing with biology. The closing block, “Beyond the Structure: Disorder, Motion and the Full Picture”, addressed intrinsically disordered proteins, biomolecular condensates and integrative structural biology, with talks by Agnes Toth-Petroczy (Max Planck Institute, Dresden), Andrea Soranno (Washington University in St. Louis), Sebastian Hiller (University of Basel) and Tomáš Pluskal (IOCB Prague).

A vibrant poster session and a strong young-scientist presence

A particular highlight of the meeting was the Friday evening poster session, where almost 40 posters were presented by PhD students, postdoctoral researchers and young group leaders. Extending late into the night over informal conversations, the poster session has long been one of the most discussed parts of Prague Protein Spring — a place where new collaborations are forged and where junior researchers present their work directly to senior colleagues from around the world.

Why Prague?

“Prague Protein Spring has, over the years, become a fixed point on the European protein-science calendar,” said Jiří Vondrášek of IOCB Prague, one of the principal organizers. “What makes this meeting different is its scale: it is small enough that everyone talks to everyone, and yet it brings together some of the world’s best researchers. In the post-AlphaFold era, where the field is reinventing itself, this kind of intimate, high-level dialogue matters more than ever.”

The conference was supported by IOCB TEC-H, Peptone, BeneMeat, Schoeller, DIANA Biotechnologies, the Czech Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (CSBMB) and NanoTemper.

About IOCB Prague

The Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences (IOCB Prague) is a leading internationally recognised research institution whose primary mission is basic research in chemical biology and medicinal chemistry, organic and materials chemistry, biochemistry, molecular biology and related fields.

About ELIXIR CZ

ELIXIR CZ is the Czech national node of the pan-European research infrastructure ELIXIR, which coordinates and provides access to bioinformatics resources, services and training for life-science researchers across Europe.