Aleix Prat (Barcelona, 1979) began to discover his vocation for combining medicine and research at the age of seventeen, when he went to the United States. After studying medicine at the University of Barcelona, a stay at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester convinced him to follow this path: "I saw a doctor who visited patients, interpreted the biological data of the tumor and, at the same time, had a laboratory. I thought that was what I wanted to do." His first mentor, the oncologist Josep Baselga, guided him towards the medical oncology residency at Vall d'Hebron.