Ricard Solé

Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Life & Medical Sciences

I am ICREA Research Professor at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, where I'm the head of the Complex Systems Lab. I am also External Professor of the Santa Fe Institute (New Mexico, USA) fellow member of the European Center for Living Technology (Venice, IT) and external faculty of the Center for Evolution and Cancer at UCSF. I am also member of the editorial board of several international journals. I obtained my degrees in Physics and Biology at the University of Barcelona and received my PhD in Physics at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. I have been awarded with James McDonnell Foundation, Botín Foundation and ERC Advanced Grants.


Research interests

One of my main research interests is understanding the origins of complexity in living and artificial systems, and how major transitions can be explained by means of statistical physics approaches. To this goal, my Lab develops both theoretical and experimental research, including an ambitious program on synthetic biology. The later area includes an exploration of synthetic multicellular systems, synthetic swarm intelligence and strategies to redesign existing ecosystems to fight climate change and its future impact.

Selected publications

- Valverde S, Piñero J, Corominas-Murtra B, Montoya J, Joppa L & Solé R 2018, 'The architecture of mutualistic networks as an evolutionary spandrel', Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2(1), 94.

- Sole R & Conde-Pueyo N 2018, 'Ultrasound approach tracks gut microbes', Nature, 553, 7686, 36 - 37.

- Seoane LF & Solé RV 2018, 'Information theory, predictability and the emergence of complex life', Royal Society Open Science, 5, 2, 172221.

- Pinero J & Sole R 2018, 'Nonequilibrium Entropic Bounds for Darwinian Replicators', Entropy, 20, 2, 98.

- Vidiella B, Sardanyes J & Sole R 2018, 'Exploiting delayed transitions to sustain semiarid ecosystems after catastrophic shifts', Journal Of The Royal Society Interface, 15, 143, 20180083.

- Aguade-Gorgorio G & Sole R 2018, 'Adaptive dynamics of unstable cancer populations: The canonical equation', Evolutionary Applications, 11, 8, 1283 - 1292.

- Sole RV, Montanez R, Duran-Nebreda S, Rodriguez-Amor D, Vidiella B & Sardanyes J 2018, 'Population dynamics of synthetic terraformation motifs', Royal Society Open Science, 5, 7.

- Seoane LF & Sole R 2018, 'The morphospace of language networks', Scientific Reports, 8, 10465.

- Rosas-Casals M, Valverde S & Sole R 2018, 'A Simple Spatiotemporal Evolution Model of a Transmission Power Grid', Ieee Systems Journal, 12, 4, 3747 - 3754.

- Solé R, Ollé-Vila A, Vidiella B, Duran-Nebreda S & Conde-Pueyo N 2018, 'The road to synthetic multicellularity', Current Opinion in Systems Biology, 7, 1-8.

- Corominas-Murtra B, Seoane LF & Solé  R 2018, 'Zipf’s Law, unbounded complexity and open-ended evolution', J. R. Soc. Interface 15: 20180395.