The biochemist and ICREA professor Luis Serrano (Madrid, 1959), at the head of the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) since 2011Núria Montserrat, winner of the 2025 National Research Prize, has been awarded the €40,000 prize by the Generalitat of Catalonia and the Catalan Foundation for Research and Innovation (FCRI). Serrano, currently leader of the Synthetic Biology group at the CRG, is recognized as a "world leader" in systems biology and protein design. The 36th edition of this award recognizes Serrano's significant international contributions to the field of protein design. With doctorates in biochemistry from the Autonomous University of Madrid and in cell biology from the same university and the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, his leadership and discoveries have deciphered the rules governing how proteins fold—an essential component of any biological process—and how networks are organized. In a statement, the Government highlights that Serrano's findings have bridged the gap between molecular biology and engineering, "opening new avenues for drug development, protein design, and synthetic biology." In fact, the researcher has combined theory and experimentation to study and better understand how cells process information and comprehend signal transduction—how a cell receives a signal and transforms it into a response—and gene regulation—what genes are activated, when, and in what quantity. Thus, he has revealed how thermodynamic principles explain the way proteins fold and how genetic networks function stably. The Generalitat also emphasizes that Serrano has created computational methods that are now international standards in molecular design. In this area, it highlights the creation of the predictive software FoldX, used worldwide by researchers and pharmaceutical companies to model mutations, design enzymes, and accelerate drug development, "a clear example of how basic science can have a broad social impact." In this regard, the executive asserts that Serrano has demonstrated "a pioneering ability" to connect basic research and technological advancement and transform them into technology transfer, "co-founding different start-ups biomedical with international reach."