Amber Alhadeff, a postdoctoral researcher in Penn’s biology department, in the School of Arts and Siences, and César de la Fuente, Presidential Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, in the Perelman School of Medicine, have been named “Top 10 Under 40” by Genetic Engineering and Biotech News (GEN) magazine.

Dr. Alhadeff’s postdoctoral research in the lab of J. Nicholas Betley focuses on the mechanisms through which different neural populations drive behavior. She is interested in how hunger neurons influence the perception of external stimuli, and how the gut communicates with the brain to control food intake. The research is designed to give scientists insights into treating metabolic diseases such as obesity, eating disorders, and type 2 diabetes. Last year, Dr. Alhadeff was one of five recipients of the 2018 L’Oréal USA For Women in Science Fellowship, which annually awards five female postdoctoral scientists grants of $60,000 each to advance their research.

Dr. de la Fuente is pioneering the computerization of biological systems for the development of transformative biotechnologies designed to solve societal grand challenges, such as antibiotic resistance. His lab is committed to generating the world’s first computer-made tools and therapies; its activity includes building artificial antibiotics, discovering new antibiotic properties in biological information, generating technologies for microbiome engineering, developing tools for synthetic neuromicrobiology, and engineering living medicines.

Several technologies Dr. de la Fuente has helped create are currently under development, and one has been licensed. He is first inventor and co-inventor of multiple patents and has consistently been awarded independent funding, including a prestigious doctoral “la Caixa” Foundation Fellowship, a postdoctoral fellowship awarded by the Ramon Areces Foundation. Most recently, he was recognized by MIT Technology Review as an “Innovator Under 35,” and he has been named “Boston Latino 30 Under 30” and a 2018 Wunderkind by STAT News.