ICREA Research Professor at Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), where he leads the Complex Systems Laboratory (IBE-UPF), and External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute (USA). His academic background combines biology and physics, the discipline in which he earned his PhD, allowing him to focus his research career on complex systems.

His research covers very diverse fields, from the study of the evolutionary dynamics of viruses to synthetic biology and its application in the bioengineering of ecosystems, as well as the study of "liquid" cognitive systems and the origins of major evolutionary innovations. He has collaborated with the Center of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB) as a popularizer and scientific advisor for the exhibition +Humans and is one of the promoters of the Science at Christmas program. In addition, he has written the books Redes complejas (Empúries, 2009; published by Tusquets in Spanish), Vidas sintéticas (Tusquets, 2012), La lógica de los monstruos (Tusquets, 2016) and Viruses as Complex Adaptive Systems (Princeton University Press, 2018).