MrKevin Michalewicz

Research interests: Machine Learning, antibody design, signal processing, astrophysics and optimisation.
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Antibody binding affinity

Antibodies are proteins that play a major role in the body’s immune response by binding to harmful foreign agents. Ideally, a particular antibody binds strongly to a specific antigen (high affinity) while avoiding unrelated ones (high specificity). The process of affinity maturation consists of sequence mutations and a selection phase that leads to matured antibodies specialised for a particular target. Despite the increasing amount of structural data on target-specific antibodies, it remains unclear what biophysical properties contribute to binding specificity and if changes in these properties accompany affinity maturation.

With Machine Learning and statistical approaches, in my PhD research I am thoroughly exploring the process of affinity maturation. This will allow me to predict the binding affinities of antibodies to targets of medical interest, including amyloid-β (related to Alzheimer's disease), influenza, HIV and SARS-CoV-2. In addition, I aim to design antibodies by strategically modifying a few amino acids, improving specificity while ensuring stability during manufacturing or maturation.
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Image processing and deconvolution

The resolution of astronomical images is limited mainly by atmospheric turbulence and optical diffraction from telescopes. The resulting blurring can be corrected, resulting in sharper images.

Prior to my PhD and in parallel, I developed STARRED (Michalewicz et al. 2023, Millon et al. 2024), a method that encompasses the reconstruction of the Point Spread Function (PSF) of the telescope, a two-channel deconvolution, and the extraction of light curves. This approach facilitates high-precision photometric measurements in imaging time series.
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Talks

• AI4X 2025 International Conference. Jul. 2025 (Singapore)
• International School and Conference on Network Science 2025. Jun. 2025 (Maastricht, the Netherlands)
• PEGS Europe Summit 2024. Nov. 2024 (Barcelona, Spain)
• TakeAIM 2024 competition. Mar. 2024 (London, United Kingdom)
• 2nd London Quantitative Immunology Day. Mar. 2024 (UCL)
• Biophysics Winter 2023 ECR symposium. Dec. 2023 (Imperial)
• 6th Mathematical Life Sciences meeting. Oct. 2023 (Imperial)
• 10th International Gran Canaria School on Deep Learning 2023. Jul. 2023 (Gran Canaria, Spain)
• President’s PhD Scholars Symposium 2023. Jun. 2023 (Imperial)
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Awards

• TakeAIM 2024 PhD competition: winner – Mar. 2024, United Kingdom.
• Distinguished Student, Universidad de Buenos Aires – 2015, 2017, 2022 & 2023, Argentina.
• Gold medal, Universidad de Buenos Aires – Nov. 2023, Argentina.
• President’s Scholarship to support PhD at Imperial College London – Nov. 2022, United Kingdom.
• Roth PhD Scholarship (declined) – Mar. 2022, United Kingdom.
• Eiffel Excellence Scholarship to support Engineering studies at IMT Atlantique – Aug. 2020, France.