Francesc Posas

Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona (Spain)

 

Francesc Posas is Full Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Department of Experimental and Health Sciences of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF). After obtaining his doctorate in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (1995), he made his postdoctoral stay at Harvard University (Boston, USA). From 1999, he leads the Cell Signaling Research Group and since 2013 is Vice-Rector for Science Policy at the UPF.

 

His group addresses how cells sense and respond to environmental changes, focusing on the characterization of signaling pathways in response to stress, particularly those controlled by the stress-activated MAP kinases of the Hog1/p38 family (SAPK). Using yeast S. cerevisiae as a model organism and higher eukaryotic cells, they analyze the molecular mechanisms of cells to respond and adapt to extracellular stimuli. Recently, the group is also analyzing the basic signaling properties of the HOG pathway and how to alter them, and in the field of synthetic biology, they have implemented complex engineered networks to perform in vivo cellular computation.

 

Dr. Posas received the award to Young Investigators from the Catalan Government (2001), EMBO Young Investigator Program (2000), EURYI to young investigators from the EU (ESF) (2004), EMBO member (2006), awarded with an ICREA Academia Researcher for University Professors (2009) and the “Carmen and Severo Ochoa” Award for Research in Molecular Biology (2011). Recently he has been awarded, together with Dr. Ricard Solé (UPF), an ERC Advanced Grant with a project based on biological computation.