Hanqun Cao(Hank)

I am on the job market for faculty, postdoctoral, and industry research positions. Get in touch →I am a final-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, advised by Prof. Pheng-Ann Heng. From June 2025 to August 2026, I was a visiting researcher at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, working with Prof. Cesar de la Fuente-Nunez in the Machine Biology Group. I also work closely with Prof. Pranam Chatterjee on peptide design.

My research develops deep generative models and reinforcement learning methods for biomolecular design. I build AI systems that design functional proteins, antimicrobial peptides, RNA, and small molecules — and validate them experimentally. Recently, I have focused on protein design through the lens of dynamics: shaping conformational ensembles and molecular interactions, and connecting changes at the protein level to cellular responses. I hold a B.Sc. in Mathematics from CUHK and 2 US patents. My work has appeared in or been accepted by Nature Medicine, Nature Communications, Nature Machine Intelligence, Nature Computational Science, Cell Reports Physical Science, IEEE TKDE, NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, EMNLP, ICCV, and MICCAI.