Professor Melo is a graduate and Master in Biochemistry from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile with 25 years of experience in the field of bioinformatics. Hedeveloped his doctorate at University Notre Dame de la Paix (1998, Belgium) and his postdoctoral stage at Rockefeller University (2000, USA).
In 2000 he was incorporated as Professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and currently, he is working as a full professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology. In 2020, Francisco joined the Institute of Biological and Medical Engineering in the same university.
His main research line is in the field of structural computational biology where he and his research group study the relation and interaction between the sequence-structure-function in macromolecules that govern the flow of genetic information in living systems (proteins, DNA and RNA). The techniques commonly used are the analysis and processing of large amounts of experimental data on computers, integrating the laws of physics, chemistry, statistical methods, and artificial intelligence.