The ICREAs

ICREA Research Professors form a vibrant community of scientists and researchers in all areas of knowledge that contribute to the advancement of humankind by exploring, interpreting and questioning. Have a look and learn about their amazing discoveries and findings here:

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    Xavier Trepat
    Trepat, Xavier
    Research Professor at
    Institut de Bioenginyeria de Catalunya (IBEC)
    Engineering Sciences
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    Research interests

    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.

    Key words

    Biophysics, Biomechanics, Cell Migration, Nanotechnology, Biomaterials

    ORCID

    : 0000-0002-7621-5214

    RESEARCHER ID

    : I-3912-2015
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    Isabel Usón
    Usón Finkenzeller, Isabel
    Research Professor at
    Institut de Biologia Molecular de Barcelona (CSIC - IBMB)
    Life & Medical Sciences
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    Research interests

    Structural biology provides eyes to the life sciences. This field, traditionally dominated by crystallography, has been enriched by atomic resolution microscopy and accurate structure predictions using deep learning to relate knowledge. New challenges can be conquered harnessing further sources of information to experiments and predictions in the development ofrational, integrated structural methods implemented in our own software ARCIMBOLDO and in SHELX. Our methods exploit the stereochemical knowledge present in small, local folds to determine and interpret structure within chemical, biomedical and biotechnological research. To extricate experimental information from model bias and data pathologies we propose a change of the validation paradigm (average stereochemistry) into verification (outperform alternative hypotheses) and are extending fragment-based algorithms into the field of electron diffraction.

    Key words

    Crystallography, phasing, refinement, computational methods, problem structures
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    Juan Valcárcel
    Valcárcel Juárez, Juan
    Research Professor at
    Centre de Regulació Genòmica (CRG)
    Life & Medical Sciences
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    Research interests

    The genome provides the instructions to build and maintain the function of a living organism. Strangely, in complex organisms these instructions are not written as continuous messages, but rather as smaller pieces interrupted by meaningless text. This arrangement has the advantage that the pieces can be combined in different ways to generate alternative instructions. We study the molecular machinery that puts messages together and how the production of alternative messages is regulated.

    Key words

    RNA processing, gene regulation

    ORCID

    : 0000-0001-5398-3571

    RESEARCHER ID

    : O-9814-2014
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    Alfonso Valencia
    Valencia Herrera, Alfonso
    Research Professor at
    Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS)
    Life & Medical Sciences
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    Research interests

    His research interest is the development of Computational Biology methods and their application to biomedical problems. Some of the computational methods he developed are considered pioneering work in areas such as biological text mining, protein coevolution, disease networks and more recently modelling cellular systems (digital twins). He participates in some of the key cancer related international consortia. In terms of community services, he is one of the initial promoters of what is now the ELIXIR infrastructure, founder of the Spanish Bioinformatics network and founder member and former president of ISCB the professional association of Bioinformaticians and the Executive Editor of the main journal in the field (Bioinformatics OUP).

    Key words

    Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Precision Medicine, Genomics, Text Mining, Cognitive Computing

    ORCID

    : https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8937-6789

    RESEARCHER ID

    : I-3127-2015
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    Sergio Valenzuela
    Valenzuela, Sergio O.
    Research Professor at
    Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia (ICN2)
    Engineering Sciences
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    Research interests

    In recent years, electronic devices have been scaled down to nanoscale sizes where quantum effects begin to interfere with their functioning. Materials and devices in such scales often present unexpected and counterintuitive physical properties. Prof. Valenzuela's Group focus is the development of novel devices, which are designed to gain insight of specific physical properties of the system components, relevant both for fundamental reasons and applications at the nanoscale. The current research interests of the group span spintronics, spin caloritronics, quantum transport and manipulation, using 2D materials and topological insulators, and quantum metrology. For more information see: http://nanodevices.icn2.cat.

    Key words

    Spintronics, magnetism, quantum computing.
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    Jeroen van den Bergh
    van den Bergh, Jeroen
    Research Professor at
    Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB)
    Social & Behavioural Sciences
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    Research interests

    I work on the interface of environmental economics, climate-policy research, and innovation studies. Research in recent years focuses on effectiveness and public support of climate policy. This accounts for undesirable systemic impacts, such as energy rebound and carbon leakage. It involves application of methods and insights from behavioural and evolutionary economics, operationalized through agent-based modelling, questionnaire surveys and online experiments. Past work covered integrated ecological-economic modelling, contributions to the growth-versus-environment debate, environmental policies applied to urban-transport issues, biodiversity valuation and policy, modelling of recycling in material-product chains, and international dimensions of environmental policy.

    Key words

    Environmental and resource economics | Energy and climate economics | Environmental science and ecological economics | Evolutionary economics and innovation studies | Spatial (regional, transport and urban) economics.

    ORCID

    : 0000-0003-3415-3083

    RESEARCHER ID

    : C-7103-2008