Ramón Álvarez Puebla is an ICREA Research Professor at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili and the Center for Chemical Technology of Catalonia, both in Tarragona. He studied Chemistry at the Universidad de Navarra and got his PhD from the Universidad Pública de Navarra in Surface Science. In 2004 he joined the group of Ricardo Aroca at the University of Windsor (Canada) where he remained in a cross appointment with the General Motors Research and Development center until the end of 2005. In 2006, Dr Álvarez was promoted to Research Officer at the National Center for Nanotechnology (NINT) belonging to the National Research Council of Canada. In 2008 he moved to Spain at the Universidad de Vigo, Spain. He joined ICREA in October of 2012.

Dr. Álvarez-Puebla is an expert in surface science and spectroscopy with emphasis on the fabrication and characterization of plasmonic particles and their integration into advanced "all optical" sensing devices for biomedicine, chemical biology and environmental monitoring. Currently he is interested in: - Design and development of plasmonic functional materials and their integration into real live "all optical" sensors. - Development of new technologies for pathogen/disease marker detection by using localized surface plasmon resonances, Raman and SERS. - In vivo intracellular monitoring and imaging of relevant cytoplasm metabolites under different conditions (health/disease). - Optical technologies for the ultrafast and ultrasensitive recognition of active compounds in combinatorial libraries.