Ricard Solé

Ricard Solé

Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Life & Medical Sciences

I am ICREA Research Professor at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, where I'm the head of the Complex Systems Lab. I am also External Professor of the Santa Fe Institute (New Mexico, USA) fellow member of the European Center for Living Technology (Venice, IT) and external faculty of the Vienna's Complexity Science Hub. I obtained my degrees in Physics and Biology at the University of Barcelona and received my PhD in Physics at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. I have been awarded with James McDonnell Foundation, Botín Foundation and ERC Advanced Grants.

Research interests

My main research interest is understanding the origins of complexity in living and artificial systems, and how major transitions can be explained by means of statistical physics approaches. To this goal, my Lab develops both theoretical and experimental research, including an ambitious program on synthetic biology. The later area includes an exploration of synthetic multicellular systems, biocomputation and synthetic swarm intelligence. Additionally, I have also created two research areas of my own, namely Liquid brains (developing a theory of cognitive networks beyond standard solid brains) and the concept of biosphere terraformation (developing synthetic biology motifs to engineer ecosystems facing future tipping points).

Selected publications

- Solé R, Kempes C & Stepney S 2025, 'Origins of life: the possible and the actual', Philosophical transactions of the royal society b-biological sciences, 380 - 1936 - 20240281.
- Pla-Mauri J & Solé R 2025, 'A minimal genetic circuit for cellular anticipation', Journal of the royal society interface, 22 - 231 - 20250528.
- Hua WS, Cui LJ, Delgado-Baquerizo M, Solé R, Kéfi S, Berdugo M, Xu N, Wang B, Liu QX & Xu C 2025, 'Causes and consequences of disordered hyperuniformity in global drylands', Proceedings of the national academy of sciences of the united states of america, 122 - 41 - e2504496122.
- Suvorov V, Solé R & Saakian DB 2025, 'Geometric phase in the Crow-Kimura model of molecular evolution on dynamic environments', Physical review e, 112 - 5 - 054409.
- Piñero J, Kolchinsky A, Redner S & Solé R 2025, 'Neutral theory of cooperative dynamics', Proceedings of the national academy of sciences of the united states of america, 122 - 51 - e2515423122.