José Francisco Costa Rubio

José Francisco Costa Rubio

PhD Candidate · BIO-HPC Research Group · UCAM Universidad Católica de Murcia

Bioinformatician with a chemistry background, working at the intersection of sustainable synthesis, machine learning and HPC for computational drug discovery.

Background

José Francisco holds a BSc in Biochemistry (Universidad de Murcia, 2024) and an MSc in Bioinformatics (Universidad de Murcia, 2025, grade 9.04/10). During the final two years of his undergraduate studies he was an internal student in the Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Immunology at UMU, in the Green Chemistry group of Prof. Pedro Lozano, where he completed his final-year project on the sustainable synthesis of cosmeceutical antioxidants.

His undergraduate experience covered hands-on biocatalysis and analytical chemistry — HPLC, GC, NMR and FTIR. The MSc in Bioinformatics added a strong computational layer: statistics, Python and R for data analysis, machine learning, semantic data and high-performance computing.

At BIO-HPC, José Francisco brings together this combined wet-lab and computational training to support the group’s drug-discovery pipeline.

Focus areas

Computational drug discovery

Virtual screening, molecular modelling and ML pipelines for early-stage hit identification within the BIO-HPC stack.

Sustainable chemistry & biocatalysis

Background in green chemistry, ionic-liquid biocatalysis and sustainable synthesis of antioxidant compounds.

HPC & machine learning

Python/R-based data analysis, machine-learning models and HPC workflows applied to biological data.

Selected publications

  • Sustainable Synthesis of New Antioxidants from Hydroxytyrosol by Direct Biocatalytic Esterification in Ionic Liquids. Susana Nieto Cerón; Inmaculada Lozano Lorente; Francisco Javier Ruiz Meseguer; José Francisco Costa Rubio; Rocío Villa Aroca; Pedro Lozano Rodríguez. Molecules 29(21):5057, MDPI, 2024. 10.3390/molecules29215057