Prize Winners

Curriculum Vitae

Graduate in Physics (University of Barcelona, ​​UB, 2000) and in Electronic Engineering (UB, 2002). Doctor from the Faculty of Medicine of the UB (2001-2004). In 2004 he moved to the Harvard School of Public Health to do postdoctoral work. After obtaining a Ramón y Cajal scholarship, in 2011 he obtained an ICREA researcher position to create and lead the "Integrative Dynamics of Cells and Tissues" group at the Institute of Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC). In addition, he is a member of the CIBER-BBN (since 2016), a member of the EMBO (since 2018), and the Banco Sabadell Biomedical Research Award (2015) and the Constantes y Vitales Award (A3Media, 2021).

Jury ruling

The Biomedical Research Jury of the King Jaume I Awards has unanimously decided to award Dr. Trepat. Trepat is a world authority and pioneer in the field of mechanobiology, a rapidly evolving discipline with profound implications for our understanding of cell biology, embryology and cancer. A cornerstone of his research is the view that cellular mechanics are governed by simple, universal physical laws.

Among his many innovative contributions, Dr. Trepat and his team discovered the phenomenon of durotaxis, the ability of individual cells and cellular collectives to navigate gradients of extracellular matrix stiffness. This discovery is crucial to understanding robust cell migration during development, healing, and collective invasion of cancer cells. Additionally, Dr. Trepat’s work is characterized by innovative approaches for the direct measurement of traction, strain, pressure and deformation in 3D epithelial monolayers, providing new insights into the mechanisms that control tissue size and shape.