Associate Professor at the Departament de Física de la Matèria Condensada,
Universitat de Barcelona, Av. Diagonal 647, 08028 Barcelona (Spain)
2011 – 2016 “Ramon y Cajal” researcher, University of Barcelona, Spain.
2008 – 2011 Post-doc: University of Barcelona, Spain
2006 – 2008 Post-doc: Florida State University, USA
2003 – 2006 Ph.D.: University of Ulm, Germany
2002 – 2003 Predoctoral Marie Curie fellowship
B.S.: University of Napoli, Italy
Dr. Xavi Ribas (born in 1974, Santa Coloma de Farners) obtained his B.Sc. Chemistry degree in 1996 at the University of Girona (UdG), and his PhD in Chemistry in 2001 at UdG. His academic career continued with a postdoctoral position at Institute of Material Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC) in the period 2002-2004. Afterwards, he obtained a “Juan de la Cierva” position and promoted to Associate professor in Chemistry at UdG by the end of 2006. He got different grants to be highlighted, such as a Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral award (2005), ICREA Academia (2010 and 2015) and an ERC- Starting Grant project (2011). He has conducted several scientific missions at international research institutions, such as University of Basel (in 1999), Stanford University (in 2000-2001), Instituto Tecnológico e Nuclear Lisboa (in 2002 and 2004), Zurich – ETH (in 2005 and 2006). He has been the co-director of 9 PhD thesis, and currently is co-directing 6 PhD students and 4 postdocs.
Dr. Felix Ritort got his PhD in 1991 in spin glasses. Since then he has made contributions to the field of disordered systems and nonequilibrium physics. In 2002 he made a turn in his career working in single-molecule biophysics to investigate energy processes in the molecular world. Ritort’s group is recognized worldwide as leader in applying the finest and most powerful methods to extract accurate quantitative information about thermodynamics and kinetics of molecular interactions in nucleic acids and proteins. He has been awarded several prizes for his research: Distinció de la Generalitat de Catalunya in 2001 for his research during the years 1991-2000; ICREA Academia Awards 2008,2013,2018 for his research as scholar at the University of Barcelona; Premio Bruker 2013 from the Sociedad de Biofísica de España for his contributions to molecular biophysics research in Spain. He is chair of the Division of Physics for Life Sciences of the European Physical Society.
Miquel Solà (1964) obtained his PhD at the UAB in 1991 with academic honours. His doctoral research under the supervision of Profs. Bertran and Lledós was awarded with the Saint Albert Prize. After several months in a consultant private company, in 1993 he moved to the University of Girona (UdG) as assistant researcher. In 1994 he did postdoctoral research in Amsterdam with Prof. Baerends and in 1995 in Calgary with Prof. Ziegler. He was appointed assistant professor of the UdG in 1997. In 2001, he got the Distinction for the Promotion of University Research (young scientist category). Since 2003, he holds a permanent position as full professor in the UdG. He received ICREA Academia Awards in 2009 and 2014. In 2013 he got the Physical Chemistry prize awarded by the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry. He is coauthor of about 350 scientific papers and he has supervised 19 doctoral Theses. He serves in the Editorial Board of Front. Chem., Theor. Chem. Acc., ACS Omega, and Sci. Rep.
Romualdo Pastor-Satorras (Barcelona, 1967) received a PhD in Condensed Matter Physics from the Universitat de Barcelona in 1995. He spent four years as postdoctoral researcher at the MIT (1996-1998) and The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, ICTP (1998-2000). He is Associate Professor of Applied Physics at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya since 2006. He has been visiting scientist at the University of Notre Dame (USA), Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (USA), Helsinky University of Technology TKK (Finland), Indiana University (USA) and the Institute for Scientific Interchange (ISI) Foundation (Italy). He hold an ICREA Academia Prize in 2009, was awarded a Distinció de la Generalitat de Catalunya per a la Promoció de la Investigació Universitària in 2003, and is a Fellow of the ISI Foundation (Italy). He is the author of more than 120 publications in peer-reviewed journals with more than 23000 citations. He has an h-index of 50.
Graduate (M.Sc.) in Chemistry from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (1985). PhD in Biochemistry from the same university (1990). Pre-Doctoral research fellow of the Spanish MEC. Departament de Bioquímica – Universitat de Barcelona (1987-1989). Assistant Professor of Biochemistry at the same university (1989-1990). Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Departament de Bioquímica. Universitat de Barcelona. 1991-2001. Invited Scientist. Department of Chemistry. Yale University 1991-1993. Full Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Departament de Bioquímica. Universitat de Barcelona 2002-present. Director Molecular Modeling and Bioinformatic Unit. Parc Cientific de Barcelona 2001-present. Director of the integrative research nodes. Director Joint IRB-BSC Program on Computational Biology.
Counselor and Advisor of different Scientific Societies and Granting Agencies.
Juan P. Torres is professor at the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya since 1994, when he joined the Department of Signal Theory and Communications. He made his PhD thesis under the supervision of Prof. Lluis Torner on optical nonlinear waves and solitons. At the beginning of the 2000s, he moved towards the realm of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, at the same time that began collaborating with ICFO-Institute of Photonic Sciences as UPC professor. His research deals with quantum concepts, such as entanglement, and what they mean when describing how Nature works. During all these years he has taught different courses in his university, or invited by other universities, about Quantum Theory, Optics, Electromagnetic Theory and Telecommunications. Seven PhD students have graduated under his supervision, and he keeps collaborations with many research groups all around the world, which have helped him to write more than 150 papers in scientific journals.
Josep M. Poblet graduated in Chemistry in 1979 from the University of Barcelona. From the same university he obtained his PhD degree in 1983 on theoretical studies of kinetic isotopes effects in organic reactions under the supervision of Professor Enric Canadell. After a postdoctoral stay with Professor Marc Bénard at the Louis Pasteur University in Strasbourg he became Associate Professor in Physical Chemistry at the Rovira i Virgili University (URV) in 1986. Since 2001 he is Professor of Physical Chemistry at this university and Director of the Physical and Inorganic Chemistry Department since 2011. JMP did a research stay in the Emory University in 2004 and he is coauthor of more than 200 scientific publications including papers in Nature, Nature Chemistry, Nature Communications, Angew. Chem., JACS, etc. He was awarded with the 2012 Bruker Physical Chemistry Prize of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry and was named Distinguished Professor of the URV in 2014.
Alex Pomarol (Barcelona, 1964) received his Ph.D. in Theoretical Particle Physics from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) in 1991. He has been postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz (1991-1993), University of Pennsylvania (1993-1994) and CERN, Geneva (1994-1996, 1998-2000). He is currently Professor of Physics at the UAB. He has also been Scientific Associate at CERN (Geneva) in 2006 and 2015, member of the Scientific Committee of the Galileo Galilei Institute for Theoretical Physics (Florence) 2008-2015, and at present is a member of the Particle Data Group (PDG). He has received the Distinció de la Generalitat award (2001) for young researchers and an ICREA Academia (2009 & 2014).
Jordi Martínez Vilalta is Senior Lecturer (Professor Agregat) at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and researcher at the Center for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications (CREAF). He graduated in Environmental Sciences at UAB in 1997 and obtained his PhD (2001) at the same university. He moved to the University of Edinburgh (UK) as a postdoctoral researcher and became an Honorary Research Fellow at this university in 2005. He has coauthored more than 100 publications in peer reviewed international journals and two books (‘Ecología con números’ (2006), a textbook; and ‘Un planeta a la deriva’ (2011), a popular science book). He obtained a favorable assessment from the Program I3 (Spanish Ministry of Science and Education) in 2009 and received an ICREA Academia in 2014.