Facundo Batista, Scientific and Associate Director of the Ragon Institute of Mass General Brigham, MIT, and Harvard, has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, the United Kingdom’s national academy of sciences and one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious scientific institutions.

Batista joins a 2026 cohort of more than 90 researchers from across the globe elected to the Fellowship, which counts Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, and Dorothy Hodgkin among its historic members. He is one of a small number of Argentinian scientists ever elected to the Fellowship.

“I am delighted to welcome this newest group of exceptional scientists to the Fellowship of the Royal Society,” said Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society, in a press release announcing this year’s fellows. “Their contributions reflect the highest standards of scientific endeavour.”

At the Ragon Institute, Batista leads a research program focused on understanding how the immune system generates protective antibodies, which has direct implications for the design of vaccines against HIV, influenza, malaria, and other infectious diseases. He is also the Phillip T. and Susan M. Ragon Professor in the Department of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a faculty member in the Department of Immunology at Harvard Medical School.

Batista’s research centers on B cells, the immune cells responsible for producing antibodies. Over more than two decades, his group has helped clarify how B cells recognize foreign molecules and refine their antibodies into the highly specific tools that protect against infection. More recently, his lab has developed advanced experimental systems that more faithfully reproduce human antibody responses, providing a powerful platform for testing next-generation vaccine candidates.

Earlier this year, the Batista Lab published two studies advancing these efforts. One, in Science, showed that a single immunization with a precision-designed immunogen can rapidly generate broadly neutralizing antibodies against HIV. A second study, published in Immunity, uncovered a previously unrecognized mechanism that shapes how immune cells are selected during an immune response

The Royal Society was founded in 1660 and exists to recognize, promote, and support excellence in science. Fellows are elected for life through a peer review process based on substantial contributions to the improvement of natural knowledge. This year’s cohort includes researchers from twenty institutions across the United Kingdom and from countries around the world, including Japan, Kenya, and Mexico as well as Argentina.