The Manuel Rico-Bruker Spain Award honoured the outstanding group of experts in biophysics who carried out these activities in Spain, especially during the last 10 years. In this XVIII edition, recent contributions to the areas of Structural and Functional Biophysics have been considered preferentially.

Professor Mingarro is the head of the UV Membrane Proteins Group, has published more than 200 scientific articles in prestigious international journals and is the main researcher of projects of the State Research Plan and the Prometheus Program for an excellence group of the Valencian Government. He has also directed eleven doctoral theses (three Extraordinary Doctorate Awards from the UV). In addition, he has been an appraiser of scientific projects for several international agencies (Norway, France, Israel, Great Britain and Canada, among others), has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Spanish Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (SEBBM), is currently a member of the commission attached to the area of Life and Health Sciences of the COSCE and, within the scope of the University of Valencia, will be secretary and vice-director of the Doctoral School.

Manuel Rico was a Spanish biochemist who worked at the CSIC’s Rocasolano Chemical-Physical Institute, a pioneer in the use of nuclear magnetic resonance. The award named after him is endowed with 3,000 euros and will be officially awarded at the conference that the SBE will hold in Bilbao on June 20 and 21, and in which, in addition, Ismael Mingarro will give a lecture.