Mario Montes

Mario Montes obtained BSc and PhD degrees in Physics from the University of Barcelona, in 1990 and 1995 respectively. He did post-doctoral research at the Hybrid Vision Lab, NASA Johnson Space Center, in Houston, USA (1995-1996), where he developed artificial vision systems for the ISS. He is an Associate Professor at the University of Barcelona since 1997, where he is co-leading the research group Optical Trapping Lab – Grup de Biofotònica (BiOPT, http://biopt.ub.edu). His research interests are centered in optical tweezers, very specifically in applications of optical trapping technology to cell biology problems. He has published more than 50 papers in peer-reviewed journals, is the co-inventor of two international patents, and has supervised five PhD thesis, and several master thesis and other graduate work. He has been visiting professor at the University of Tokyo (2010) and is also a co-founder of IMPETUX (http://www.impetux.com) a high-tech start-up, which aims to commercialize the cutting-edge technology developed at the university.