Villarroya is full professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and current scientific director of the Institute of Biomedicine of the University of Barcelona. He obtained his PhD at the University of Barcelona and after post-doc research in CNRS (Paris) and New York University Medical Center, he established a research group on energy metabolism and adiposity. His findings have been published in close to two hundred articles, some of them in major journals such as Cell, Cell Metabolism, Nature Comm, NEJM and Diabetes. Research is supported by local and international agencies, charities and in collaboration with pharmaceutical and biotech companies. He is member of the steering committees of CIBERobn (Spanish institute for obesity research) and SEEDO (Spanish Society for Studies on Obesity), and editorial board member of the journals Endocrinology and Endocrine. He has acted as member of national and international (France, Portugal, Sweden) agencies of research evaluation.

Pere Roca-Cusachs obtained his PhD in cellular biophysics in 2007 from the Medical School at the University of Barcelona. He then worked in the lab of Prof. Michael Sheetz (Columbia University) as a post-doctoral researcher until 2011. He is currently a Serra-Hunter Associate Professor at the University of Barcelona, and Group Leader at the Institute for bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC). His group studies the physical and molecular mechanisms by which cells detect and respond to mechanical signals.  He currently coordinates an EU-funded Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) project dedicated to understanding the mechanical control of biological function. He is a recipient of the EMBO Young Investigator award, the 2017 City of Barcelona award to the life sciences, and the 2019 Young Investigator Award of the European Biophysical Societies Association (EBSA).

Eduardo Soriano (ES) received his PhD in Developmental Neurobiology from the University of Barcelona in 1986 (Supervisor, Alfonso Fairén). After post-doctoral training at the Universities of Lausanne, Frankfurt and Freiburg (Profs. Hendrik van der Loos and Michael Frotscher), he was appointed Associate Professor at the Institute of Cell Biology (University of Barcelona) in 1989, where he was promoted to Full Professor in 1995. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Fribourg (Michael Frotscher), the INSERM U-106 (Constantino Sotelo, Paris), and Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma (Mariano Barbacid, Princeton-USA). He has been honored with national awards, including the “Rey Jaime I Research Award” (2000) and The “Francisco Cobos Biomedical Research Award” (2001). He has been Chairman of the National Biomedicine Granting Program (ANEP) 2008-2010, member and Vice-Chair (2009) of the LS5 Panel (2009, 2011, 2015 and 2017) at the ERC and Elected Member of the RACAB.

Sergi Munné-Bosch (ICREA Academia Prize 2008 and 2014) was born in Barcelona, Spain, 1974. He received the Biology and PhD degrees at the University of Barcelona, during 1996 and 1999, respectively. He has performed several stays abroad, including the University of Hannover and University of Kiel (Germany), University of Fukuyama (Japan), Montana State University and University of Virginia (USA). Since 2003, he is a Professor of Plant Physiology at the University of Barcelona. During 2000 and 2003, he was a recipient of the Plant Water Relations and Plant Physiology Awards, respectively, given by the Spanish Society of Plant Physiologists. He is an author of more than 170 articles in scientific journals, 16 book chapters and has edited 2 books. He is currently editor-in-chief of the journal Environmental and Experimental Botany (Elsevier) and is leading several research projects, including both basic and applied aspects of plant biology.