Xavier Trepat received a BSc in Physics in 2000 and a BSc in Engineering in 2001. In 2004 he obtained his PhD from the Medical School at the University of Barcelona. He then joined the Program in Molecular and Integrative Physiological Sciences at Harvard University as a postdoctoral researcher. In 2008 he became a "Ramón y Cajal" researcher at the University of Barcelona and in January 2011 an ICREA Research Professor at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC). He is Group Leader of the Integrative Cell and Tissue Dynamics research line at IBEC. In 2015, he won the Banc de Sabadell Award for Biomedical Research and, in 2021, the "Constantes y Vitales" award from A3Media. In 2018, he was elected EMBO Member.

We aim at understanding how physical forces and molecular control modules cooperate to drive biological function. We develop new technologies to map and perturb the main physical properties that determine how cells and tissues grow, move, invade and remodel. By combining this physical information with systematic molecular perturbations and computational models we explore the principles that govern the interplay between chemical and physical cues in living tissues. We study how these principles are regulated in physiology and development, and how they are derailed in cancer.