Josep Sardanyés

Lecturer at CRM
Research area: Dynamical Systems
Personal webpage

PhD in Biology obtained at UPF (2009)

Biosketch

I am a senior research fellow at the Centre de Recerca Matemàtica (CRM) and member of the Computational and Mathematical Biology group lead by ICREA Prof. Tomás Alarcón. I am also an associate professor in the department of Experimental and Health Sciences at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF, Barcelona). Prior to joining the CRM in January 2017, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the Complex Systems Lab at the UPF. I completed my Ph.D. in Biology in 2009 at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, with a dissertation based on nonlinear replicator dynamics applied to the origins-of-life problem, to the evolutionary dynamics of RNA viruses, and to theoretical and computational ecology. After my PhD thesis I did a postdoc at the Evolutionary Systems Virology Group lead by Prof. Santiago F. Elena (CSIC-UPV in València) and at the David J. Gladstone Institutes (University of California San Francisco, USA).

Current and previous positions

  • Senior Research Fellow at the Centre de Recerca Matemàtica (CRM)
  • Member of the Computational and Mathematical Biology Group lead by Prof. Tomás Alarcón at CRM
  • Associate professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Biomedical Engineering Degree)
  • 2012-2016: Postdoctoral fellow ath the Complex Systems Lab (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
  • 2011-2012: Postdoctoral researcher at the David J. Gladstones Institute (University of California San Francisco, USA)
  • 2009-2010: Postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Molecular and Plant Biology (IBMCP-CSIC-UPV)
  • 2004-2008: Doctorate student at the Complex Systems Lab (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)

Prizes, awards, honors and distinctions

  • Knowledge Transference Prize 2010 in health and life sciences to the PhD thesis: Dynamics, Evolution and Information in Nonlinear Dynamical Systems of Replicators, awarded by the Social Council of Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), Barcelona (Spain).
  • PhD extraordinary prize 2009 awarded by the UPF Doctorate and Postgraduate Commission.
     

Research lines

My research spans de fields of dynamical systems and applied mathematics in Biology. I am particularly interested in bifurcation theory and its applications in systems biology and biomedicine. Together with the topics developed during my PhD and my three postdocs, I am currently doing research on cancer dynamical systems, focusing on the impact of tumor genetic and non-genetic heterogeneity in the fate of cancer cells. Also, I am doing research on stochastic dynamical systems and synthetic biology.

Selected publications

  • Guillamon A., Fontich E., Sardanyés J, Bifurcations analysis of oscillating hypercycles. Journal of Theoretical Biology 387: 23-30 (2015)
  • Sardanyés J., Simó C., Martínez R., Solé R.V., Elena S.F., Variability in mutational fitness effects prevents full lethal transitions in large quasispecies populations. Scientific Reports 4: 4625 (2014)
  • Notton T., Sardanyés J., Weinberger A.D., Weinberger L.S. The case for transmissible antivirals to control population-wide infectious disease. Trends in Biotechnology 32(8): 400-405 (2014)
  • Fontich E., Sardanyés J., General scaling law in the saddle-node bifurcation: a complex phase space study. Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical 41(15102): 1-9 (2008)
  • Sardanyés J., Solé R.V., Matching allele dynamics and coevolution in a minimal predator-prey replicator model. Physics Letters A 372(4): 341-350 (2008)