Tomás Alarcón

Centre de Recerca Matemàtica

Experimental Sciences & Mathematics

I obtained my PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Barcelona in 2000. After that I spent many wonderful years working as a postdoc at the University of Oxford, UK (2001-2003), University College London, UK (2003-2006), and Imperial College London, UK (2006-2009). I briefly held a senior researcher and group leader position at BCAM, Bilbao, Spain (2009-2010), after which I moved the Centre Recerca Matematica where I lead the Computational & Mathematical Biology Group. I have also held visiting fellowships at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, IIMAS (UNAM, Mexico DF), OCCAM (University of Oxford, UK), the Mathematical Institute (University of Oxford, UK), and the Mathematical Biosciences Institute (Columbus, Ohio, USA). In October 2015, I was appointed to an ICREA Research Professorship at the Centre de Recerca Matematica.


Research interests

My research focuses on Mathematical Biology, particularly in multi-scale and stochastic modelling of tumour growth and tumour-induced angiogenesis. The main aim of my research is to understand the mechanisms involved in drug resitance and formulate therapeutic strategies which are robust to such mechanisms. Although tumour growth is my main field of specialisation, I am interested in other areas of Mathematical Biology, particularly regarding the effects of random fluctuations in cell regulatory systens and population dynamics, robustness and evolvability, and the stochastic dynamics of HIV-1-infection in patients treated with potent anti-retroviral therapy.

Selected publications

– Sardanyes J, Arderiu A, Elena SF & Alarcon T 2018, ‘Noise-induced bistability in the quasineutral coexistence of viral RNA under different replication modes‘, J R Soc. Interface. 15, 20180129.

– Sardanyes J & Alarcon T 2018, ‘Noise-induced bistability in the fate of cancer phenotypic quasispecies: a bit-strings approach‘, Scientific Reports, 8, 1027.

– de la Cruz R, Perez-Carrasco R, Guerrero P, Alarcon T & Page  KM 2018, ‘Minimum Action Path theory reveals the details of stochastic biochemical transitions out of oscillatory cellular states‘, Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 128102

– Folguera-Blasco N, Cuyas E, Menendez JA & Alarcon T 2018, ‘Epigenetic regulation of cell fate reprogramming in aging and disease: A predictive computational model‘, PLoS Comp. Biol. 14, e1006052.


Selected research activities

– Co-organiser (jointly with Jean Clairambault, INRIA, France, and Thomas Hillen, University of Alberta, Canada), of the workshop on Mathematical challenges in the analysis of continuum models for cancer growth, evolution and therapy, November 2018, BIRS, Casa Matem’atica de Oaxaca, Oaxaca, M’exico.

– Co-organiser (jointly with Jose Antonio Carrillo, Imperial College London, UK, Silvia Cuadrado, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, and Antoni Guillamon, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya) of the Intensive Research Programme Current developments in Mathematical Biology, April–June 2018, Centre de Recerca Matematica, Barcelona, Spain.