Ricard Solé - Biography#

Ricard Solé is an ICREA research professor (the Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies) currently working at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra , where he is the head of the COMPLEX SYSTEMS LAB, located at the PRBB (Biomedical Research Park). Prof. Solé teaches courses on Biomathematics, principles of biological design and biocomputation. He completed degrees in both Physics and Biology at the University of Barcelona and received his PhD in Physics at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. He is also External Professor of the Santa Fe Institute (New Mexico, USA), external faculty of the Center for Evolution and Cancer at UCSF, Fellow of the European Center for Living Technology in Venice and member of the editorial board of Biology Direct and PLoS ONE. He also received a European Research Council Advanced Grant (ERC 2012).

He has published more than 250 scientific papers (a complete list https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=BqIjjUAAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&pagesize=100) with 18.000 citations. Every year has been invited as keynote speaker 4-5 times, and 5 as an invited speaker in international conferences (see http://complex.upf.edu/ricard).

His current research focuses in understanding the evolutionary origins of complex systems, using both mathematical models and experimental approaches based on synthetic biology. He proposed the concept of Synthetic Major Transitions as a unifying framework to explore the origins of innovation in evolution using a parallel approach, namely our potential for building or simulating synthetic systems that can recreate past evolutionary events. This includes the origin of protocells, multicellular systems, symbiosis, cognition and language. Another research area deals with Unstable Evolutionary dynamics, namely the dynamics of biological systems (particularly RNA viruses and cancer) that exhibit a tendency towards high genetic instability as part of their adaptation potential. Moreover, he also introduced the concept of "Terraforming" endangered or human-made ecosystems to avoid catastrophic shifts. The success of this proposal will require the development of a new synthesis involving multiple scales and conceptual frameworks, from synthetic biology and cellular circuits to ecological communities.