Born in Madrid, he studied Theoretical Physics at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He spent many years at DESY in Hamburg (Germany) studying deeply inelastic scattering in the ZEUS experiment, where he obtained his PhD and then worked as DESY researcher. In 2001, he moved to USA to work in Fermilab. He participated in the CDF experiment at the Tevatron  collider, with emphasis on searches for new physics. In 2007 he moved back to Europe and started working also in the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN,  initiating operations in 2009. Since then he was acting as project leader of the IFAE-Barcelona group in ATLAS. In 2015 he was appointed Head of IFAE Experimental Division, Scientific Manager of the Spanish High Energy Physics, and Scientific Delegate in CERN's Council. Starting in 2018, he initiated a new activity  related to Gravitational Waves Physics with the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA interferometers.

Research interests

I originally focused on QCD studies and searches for new physics beyond the Standard Model at particle physics collider experiments in Europe and USA. This translates into hundreds of publications, tens of conference talks, and 13 PhD theses that I supervised to date. Since 2009, I focused on the LHC physics program at CERN.  In 2012 the LHC experiments (ATLAS and CMS) discovered the Higgs boson.  In  the period 2009-2015, I led a group of scientists from IFAE-Barcelona that analyzes the data from the ATLAS experiment. In  2015 I took  responsibilities as Head of IFAE Experimental Division (untill September 2020),  Scientific Manager of the Spanish High Energy Physics Program (until June 2018), and Scientific Delegate to CERN Council (until June 2018). In November 2018, I initiated at IFAE a brand new involvement in Gravitational Wave Physics in the Virgo interferometer with emphasis on those aspects related to fundamental physics and cosmology. In  the last two years, the IFAE group  has been developing new detectors for instrumenting the most sensitive and delicate parts of Virgo (the areas covered by baffles surrounding  the suspended mirrors under vacuum) to monitor and control the stray light propagating throughout the interferometer, a limiting factor for its sensitivity. I am also involved in the preparation of the Einstein Telescope (ET) 3rd-generation  inteferometer project,  as member of the ET Steeting committee and co-chair of the Scattered Light Working Group in ET's Instrument Science Board.