Jaume Casademunt
Born in Barcelona in 1962, I obtained my PhD in Physics from the University of Barcelona in 1988. I pursued postdoctoral studies as a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh in the USA from 1989 to 1991 and continued as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Florida State University from 1991 to 1993. I began my academic career as an Associate Professor of Condensed Matter Physics at the University of Barcelona in 1993 and have been a Full Professor in the same field since 1997. In 2020, I received the ICREA-Academia award, which I hold until 2024.
Alberto Fernandez-Nieves
Born in Granada (Spain) in 1973, I earned a Physics PhD from the University of Granada, and did post-doctoral work at Harvard University. I obtained a faculty position at the Georgia Institute of Technology and got promotion and tenure in 2014. My field of expertise is soft condensed matter physics, and I do work all the way from liquid crystals, topological defects and surface-tension-driven instabilities, to colloidal polymer gel thermodynamics, the glass transition, and active matter. I am currently an ICREA Professor at the University of Barcelona.
Aurora Hernandez-Machado
Aurora Hernandez-Machado is Full Professor of Condensed Matter Physics at the University of Barcelona. She did her PhD thesis at the University of Barcelona and Postdoctoral studies at the Philipps University of Marburg (Germany) and University of Pittsburgh (U.S.A.) as Fulbright fellow. AHM is currently interested in the general topic of Physics of Complex Systems, particularly in the fields of Biophysics, Microfluidics and Nanoscience. AHM present research is focused on the Biomechanics of biosystems like biofluids, red blood cells, bacteria, cancer and malaria. AHM has complemented her theoretical research by establishing a Laboratory of Microfluidics and Nanoscience at the Faculty of Physics of the University of Barcelona and a Laboratory of Complex Fluids in the Centre de Recerca Matematica. She has international patents by the European Patent Office of Munich and U.S.A. Patent Office licenced since 2016. Since 2018 AHM is cofounder of start-up companies which exploit her patents. AHM is Miembro Correspondiente of the Academia de Ciencias de Mexico since 2019.
Marta Ibañes Miguez
Marta Ibañes is an associate professor at the University of Barcelona, specializing in Systems Biology. She earned her BSc (1997) and PhD (2001) in Physics from the Universitat de Barcelona, receiving the ‘Premi Extraordinari’ award for her thesis. As a postdoctoral Fulbright scholar at the Salk Institute (2003-2005), she contributed to understanding symmetry breaking and morphogen gradients in vertebrate embryos. Returning to UB in 2005, she became a ‘Ramon y Cajal’ Researcher, later becoming an associate professor in 2009. Marta’s current research explores cell communication mechanisms driving coordinated cell fate decisions in animals and plants.
Silvia Muro
I obtained a PhD in Sciences from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, and then was a Research Assistant Professor in Pharmacology in the University of Pennsylvania. I was a Tenured Associate Professor in the University of Maryland until November 2017, when I became an ICREA Professor in the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC). My research sits at the interface between cellular biology, nanotechnology, and drug delivery.
Jordi Ortin Rull
Ramon Planet Latorre
Born in Barcelona in 1981, I obtained my BSc and PhD in Physics from the Universitat de Barcelona (UB) in 2009. I continued my scientific career in Lyon as CNRS postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratoire de Physique (ENS-Lyon) and as an AXA postdoctoral fellow at the Univesité Claude Bernard Lyon 1. Later in 2016 I returned to UB as a Beatriu de Pinós fellow and since 2021 I became assistant professor at UB. My main research interests focus on Soft matter and Statistical physics, with a main motivation of understanding the relation between the system internal correlations and their complex response. My approach to these problems is mainly experimental usually working with model systems that can be tuned, for instance using a Hele-Shaw cell with dichotomic gap-spacing to reproduce the physics of flows in porous media or shearing a two-dimensional layer of grains to mimic earthquakes at a laboratory scale.
Jordi Soriano Fradera
Born in Barcelona in 1970, I earned a PhD in Physics at the University of Barcelona, and did post-doctoral work at Bayreuth (Germany) and the Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel), specializing in biophysics and neuroscience. In 2008 I obtained a faculty position at the University of Barcelona, where I established my own laboratory in neuroscience as associate professor. I work in physics of complex systems applied to neuronal networks, where I study neurons grown in vitro and characterize their self-organization capacity and their repertoire of activity patterns. Using tools from network theory I also investigate the resilience of neuronal networks to disease and damage; and, in collaboration with medical research groups in Barcelona, I participate in the development of therapies for neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
Pietro Tierno
Dr. Tierno was born in Italy in 1976, and earned a PhD in Natural Science from the University of Ulm (Germany) in 2005. He was post-doctoral fellow at Florida State University (Tallahassee, USA) and later “Ramón y Cajal” researcher at the University of Barcelona (UB). He then became associate professor of condensed matter physics at UB in 2017, and from 2021 is full professor at UB. His main research interests include soft matter systems under out of equilibrium conditions including driven colloids, particle manipulation via external fields, geometric frustration phenomena and active particle systems.