Dr Hidalgo Gonzalez is the manager of the Stafford Fox Drug Discovery Facility (DDF) at MCRI, the Facility Lead for the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Stem Cell Medicine (reNEW) and a Team Leader in the Heart Regeneration Group. Dr Hidalgo Gonzalez has over 12 years’ experience working with human pluripotent stem cells for early drug discovery programs. He has industry expertise in the design and execution of drug screening projects for the identification of leads from a wide range of drug classes. During his time in biotech, he contributed with protocol establishment for the disease model for screening that led to FDA Orphan Drug designation for a DUX4 inhibitor (GBC0905) for the treatment of Fascioscapulohumeral dystrophy (FSHD). At AstraZeneca, Dr. Hidalgo Gonzalez further optimised disease models from iPSCs for the study of novel cardiac ionotropes for the treatment of heart failure and generation of high quality human target validation data. The outcomes achieved contributed to the progression of a novel mRNA modifying drug-class and Anti Sense Oligonucleotide compound (ASO), from Target Identification and Validation to Lead Identification and Optimization. His research focuses on the identification of novel cell products and drug like compounds using advanced human disease models in combination with high throughput phenotypic drug screening.