The Director of the BIST Community centre CRG, Dr. Luis Serrano Pubul, has been recognised by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities with the 2025 Premio Nacional de Innovación 2025 modalidad Trayectoria Innovadora (National Innovation Award in the Innovative Career category), the highest national recognition for scientific and business leadership in R&D.
The jury emphasized that Dr. Serrano is an “international reference and example for new generations of researchers” thanks to “a career marked by scientific excellence, innovation, and commitment to knowledge transfer.”
The award highlights his pioneering role in the creation of spin-off companies that contribute to pharmacological development efforts for chronic pain, precision medicine for cancer, and treatments for neurodegenerative diseases, as well as the development of FoldX, a world-renowned software for the design and prediction of protein structures.
“Fundamental research takes on a new meaning when it translates into benefits for society, and this award recognizes this collective effort to bring ideas from the laboratory to tangible solutions,” says Dr. Serrano, Director of the Centre for Genomic Regulation.
The biologist Luis Serrano, born in Madrid in 1959, earned a bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences from the Complutense University (1981) and a doctorate in Biochemistry from the Autonomous University of Madrid (1985). After his postdoctoral studies at the MRC in Cambridge, he led groups at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg and directed its Structural and Computational Biology Programme, as well as at the CNIO in Madrid, before joining the CRG in 2006 and assuming its leadership in 2011.
Committed to technology transfer, he has co-founded Diverdrugs, Cellzome, EnVivoPharmaceutical, Triskel, and, most recently, Pulmobiotics and Orikine Bio, consolidating a business ecosystem that has attracted international investment. In parallel, the pharmaceutical industry and more than 1,500 researchers use his FoldX platform to design proteins and predict the impact of mutations.
The Minister of Science, Innovation, and Universities, Diana Morant, stated that “these awards are the most prestigious recognition in Spain in these sectors” and that “innovation and design are symbols of progress and well-being, offering advanced solutions to major challenges facing our society.”
The jury for the 2025 National Innovation Awards was chaired by the Secretary General for Innovation, Teresa Riesgo Alcaide, and included Jesús Hernández Galán, Jaime García Cantero, Alicia Asín Pérez, Ion Arocena Vélez, Pilar Pasarón Polo, and Ignacio García Fenoll.
