He graduated in physics in 1987 from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Before and during his PhD (Yale University, 1994), he worked with Prof. J. Fernández de la Mora on aerodynamic focusing, inertial impaction, electrospray atomization, and differential mobility analysis. As postdoc associate with Prof. John B. Fenn at Virginia Commonwealth University, he did research on electrospray ionization mass spectrometry. In 1996 he joined Aradigm Corporation (California, USA) to develop liquid micro-jet technology for inhalation drug delivery. There, he co-discovered, with Prof. A. Gañán-Calvo (Universidad de Sevilla, Spain), the "flow blurring" fine liquid atomization regime. Since joining Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) in 2004 as ICREA Research Professor, his research has focused on electrospray and electrospinning for the manufacturing of nanomaterials. He leads the Droplets, intErfaces, and floWs (DEW) research lab at URV.

Research interests

I am broadly interested in fluid dynamics applied to designing nanomaterials in different fields of application. Liquid flow structures can be transformed to solid structures, e.g. droplets to particles. Particularly, electrostatic fields can deform liquid-gas and liquid-liquid interfaces so that a tiny jet is ejected which can be used to make nanodroplets or nanofibers. Both by experiment and by computer modeling, we aim to (i) understand the precise mechanisms underlying the fluid dynamic processes involved, (ii) devise new nano-fluidic strategies to create functional structures (e.g., ‘smart’ particles for nanobiomedicine), (iii) characterize the properties of such structures, (iv) engineer ways to assemble them into larger functional supra-structures, e.g. high resolution 3D printing for assembling nanofibers into scaffolds for growing cells into living tissues, and (v) develop strategies to demonstrate how these processes can be scaled up so they can ultimately benefit humankind.