Jordi García-Ojalvo has been awarded the Manuel Rico-Bruker Spain Prize for his outstanding career in biophysics. An award that has been presented by the Spanish Society of Biophysics (SEB) for the past 28 years. 

The SEB has honoured García-Ojalvo “for the development of integrative approaches in functional and systems biophysics to unravel the mechanisms and implications of dynamic phenomena in living systems, from individual cells to whole organisms”. 

Jordi García-Ojalvo is a professor and researcher in the Department of Medicine and Life Sciences (MELIS) at the UPF, where he heads the Dynamical Systems Biology Lab, investigating how living organisms adapt and process information in a changing world.

Since autumn 2024, his group has been participating in the CeLEARN project, funded by a prestigious ERC Synergy Grant. The project is coordinated by Dr Aneta Koseska, from the Max Planck Institute for Behavioural Neurobiology (Caesar) in Bonn, and also involves Professor Dietmar Schmucker, from the University of Bonn, and Professor Jeremy Gunawardena, from MELIS-UPF.

The SEB’s Manuel Rico Award recognises an outstanding professional career in the field of biophysics, primarily carried out in Spain over the last ten years. García-Ojalvo is the twenty-seventh researcher to receive this award. The UPF professor will receive the award alongside Benjamí Oller — winner of the Enrique Pérez Payá Prize — and Alberto Marín — winner of the Hawk Biosystems Prize — at the European Congress of Biophysics of the South Atlantic, to be held in Montpellier from 17 to 19 June.