Pau Gorostiza graduated in physics at the University of Barcelona (UB), where he obtained his PhD (European Doctorate) in the field of semiconductor electrochemistry. He worked at the UB microscopy facility in AFM and STM of biological samples, and in nanotechnology for materials science. He visited the CNRS - Université Pierre et Marie Curie (France), and the University of California at Berkeley (USA). He is currently ICREA Research Professor at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia, where he develops photoswitchable ligands of neuronal proteins and studies electron transfer in redox proteins and photosynthetic complexes using EC-STM/AFM. He obtained a Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) Career Development Award and two European Research Council (ERC) grants. He published more than 100 articles (3200 citations, h-index 29) and holds 7 patents (5 licensed). He has supervised 8 postdoctoral fellows and 9 PhDs.

Research interests

Research in the group is focused on developing nanoscale tools to study biological systems. These tools include instrumentation based on proximity probes, like Electrochemical Tunneling Microscopy and Spectroscopy, that we are applying to study metal oxides and redox proteins. Another set of nanotools that we are developing is based on molecular actuators that can be switched with light, like azobenzene, which can be chemically attached to biomolecules in order to optically control their activity.