My professional activity started in 1990 when I finished my studies in mathematics at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). Next year I started working in my Ph. D. under the supervision of Jaume Llibre (full professor of Applied Mathematics, Departament de Matemàtiques, UAB. We celebrated his 60th birthday with a nice conference in Salou, 2012). My work was about qualitative theory of differential equations on the plane.
During this period, I was an Associate Professor in the Unit of Economic Analysis (UFAE) at the UAB. There I taught mathematics to undergraduates. I will always be grateful to the people in the department for the many things I learned about research methods and department projects (see, for instance, the IDEA doctoral program). Through this relationship with the economists there I have been doing some work in mathematical economics, mainly game theory, auction theory and other applications. I should say that most of what I know about this microeconomics stuff I learned from my friend María Ángeles de Frutos (full professor at Carlos III University in Madrid, who unfortunately passed away on December 2012. In the coauthor's page you can find some lines I wrote in her memmory in catalan and spanish).
In October 1995, right after my PhD defence, I joined the Mathematics and Statistics Department at Boston University (BU) where I spent two academic years as a postdoctoral researcher. Even though winter 1995 was one of the coldest winters in Boston in the XX century, I got on well there and the people there were very kind to me and to my family! Financial support for this came from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Education. In Boston I met Bob Devaney, who introduced me to complex dynamics. I also met Ziggy Nitecki (who kindly agreed to share with me a nice problem on structural stability) at Tufts University.
At the end of my contract I returned to Barcelona where I found a permanent position in the Unit of Economic Analysis (UFAE), at the UAB, where I taught microeconomics and industrial organisation at the business school in Sabadell. Finally, in February 2003, I got a permanent position in the (old) Department de Matemàtica Aplicada i Anàlisi at the Universitat de Barcelona (UB), although during the academic years 2008-09, 2009-10, 2010-11, I was on three years’ leave from the UB in the Department d'Inginyeria Informàtica i Matemàtiques (DEIM) at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), Sescelades Campus, in Tarragona. Since September 2011 I am teaching again at UB, but now at the new Departament de Matemàtiques i Informàtica. In February 2019 (one month before the COVID19 pandemic) I got a Full Professor position.
My work in mathematics is strongly linked to two dynamical systems groups in Barcelona: the GSD-UAB and the GSD-UB-UPC where people work on discrete and continuous dynamical systems generated by the iteration of functions or differential equations, respectively. In any event, over the last few years my work has been focussed in Holomorphic Dynamics and we have built a research group on this topic (with Núria Fagella, Toni Garijo and Jordi Canela). We study discrete dynamical system generated by the iterates of a holomorphic function in the complex plane. Since some years ago we have been organising a small seminar at the Universitat de Barcelona and every two years (since 2005) we organize the Topics in Complex Dynamics school, a reference meeting of the area of holomorphic dynamics. See also BGS-MATH (a joint adventure of the catalan mathematical comunity) as well as CRM (the Centre de Recerca Matemàtica), IMUB (Institut de Matemàtiques de la Universitat de Barcelona) and IMTech (Institute of Mathematics of UPC-Barcelona Tech). In summary I guess Barcelona is an attractive place to do research in mathematics and, specifically, dynamical systems.
In November 2014 I was elected (for four years) as President of the Catalan Mathematical Society (SCM). The exectuive committe was formed by Enric Ventura (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya) as Vice President, Iolanda Guevara (secondary school teacher) as Assistant Vice President, Natalia Castellana (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) as Treasurer, and Albert Ruiz (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) as Secretary. I finished my turn on February 2019.
In March 2020 I have been elected director of the Fundació Ferran Sunyer i Balaguer (FFSB). The foundation is in the memory to the Catalan mathematician Ferran Sunyer i Balaguer (1912-1967); the most relevant catalan mathematician during this period although he suffered from a severe disability. In July 2022, I was elected director of the Institute of Mathematics at the University of Barcelona (IMUB)
At weekends I like to spend time with my family; Cori (my wife), and our (rather numerous) children, Xavi (and his wife Ana), Maria, Núria and Joan. I did play futbol (I should stop because a serious problem in one of my ankles) and later run with my friends of SansaSuaToT but again my body said this is it. Nowadays I swim twice a week, go to (mountain) bike and I do some sppining at EstemPerTu.
Since we moved in Sant Sadurní d'Anoia in 2014 I got involved, as treasurer, to the Festa de la Fil·loxera, our major festitivity. Lastly I also assumed the coordination of Junts per Sant Sadurní (the political side of Junts per Catalunya in our town).
Once a month my wife and I join our friends POPS (pops, in Catalan, means Octopus but the second meaning here is a private stuff...) where we discuss about our role as Christians in the world.