Armando del Rio Hernandez

Dr Armando del Rio Hernandez obtained his PhD in Chemistry in the Department of Physical Chemistry at the Complutense University of Madrid. He graduated with Summa Cum Laude and received the extraordinary award for best PhD thesis. He trained as a postdoctoral researcher in cell biology and biophysics at Columbia University in New York under the supervision of Professor Mike Sheetz, where he became interested in the field of mechanotransduction. Working in his laboratory, and under the co-supervision of Professor Julio Fernandez, Dr del Rio contributed to the elucidation of the role of the force-induced protein unfolding as a cellular mechanism of mechanotransduction.

Dr del Rio started his independent career in 2012, when he briefly held a Lecturer position (equivalent to US Assistant Professor) at the CRUK Centre of Excellence Barts Cancer Institute in London (UK). In 2013, he joined the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London as a Senior Lecturer and achieved tenure in 2014. Currently, he is Reader in Cellular and Molecular Mechanotransduction. As a group leader, he continued exploring the cellular and molecular mechanisms of mechanotransduction and established a new research direction in the field of cancer biophysics. He leads a programme of research at the interface between mechanobiology, bioengineering, and medicine aimed to understand how biochemical and mechanical signalling merge in cells to regulate physiological and pathological processes with emphasis in fibrotic diseases and cancer.

Del Rio has authored more than 60 peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Science, ACS Nano, Nature, Nature Materials, Nature Communications, PLoS Biology, Hepatology, Oncogene, EMBO reports, and PNAS. He has managed large research grants and attracted over £3.5M of external funding (including ERC StG, two ERC PoC, EPSRC, Royal Society, MRC, and industry). He has been invited as plenary lecturer at several seminars and conferences. He was Keynote Forum Speaker and Discussion Leader at the Gordon Research Conference – The Physical Science of Cancer held in Texas, US in 2017. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology in 2020 and sits in several research grant evaluation panels in Europe. He is the Director of Biomechanics and Mechanobiology theme in the Centre for Scar free and wound healing at Imperial College London since 2017.

Teaching has been a recurrent theme across his career. He has refined and consolidated his teaching skills at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels in the area of Biology and Chemistry in the United States and United Kingdom. He leads the MRes in Bioengineering at Imperial College since 2013.