Rate My Professor Sergi Garcia-Manyes

Professor Sergi Garcia-Manyes is Professor of Biophysics in the Department of Physics at King’s College London, Faculty of Natural, Mathematical & Engineering Sciences, and Head of the Biological Physics & Soft Matter research group. He earned his BSc in Chemistry with Honors from the University of Barcelona in 2000, followed by an MSc in Analytical Chemistry in 2001 and a PhD in Physical Chemistry in 2005 from the same university. From 2005 to 2012, he conducted postdoctoral research as a research associate in Prof. Julio Fernandez’s group at Columbia University, focusing on single-molecule mechanics. In 2012, he established his laboratory at King’s College London in a joint appointment between the Department of Physics and the Randall Division of Cell and Molecular Biophysics. He was promoted to tenured Professor of Biophysics in 2016, became Head of the Biological Physics and Soft Matter group in 2017, established a satellite laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute in 2019, and was appointed Crick Group Leader in 2020. He has directed the Mechanics of Life Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarship Programme and the BiPAS Centre for Doctoral Training.

Garcia-Manyes’ research specializes in single-molecule mechanobiology, exploring conformational dynamics of proteins under mechanical force, mechanochemical reactions at the single-bond level, and nanomechanics of cellular membranes and lipid bilayers using atomic force microscopy and force-clamp spectroscopy. His laboratory investigates how mechanical forces regulate protein folding, nuclear translocation, cell-cell junctions, and ribosome-mediated membrane protein folding. Key publications include “Structural anisotropy results in mechano-directional transport of proteins across nuclear pores” (Nature Physics, 2024), “Single-molecule magnetic tweezers to probe the equilibrium dynamics of individual proteins at physiologically relevant forces and timescales” (Nature Protocols, 2024), “Force-Triggered Thermodynamically Uphill Disulfide Reduction through Sulfur Oxidation State Control” (Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2025), “The role of single protein elasticity in mechanobiology” (Nature Reviews Materials, 2023), and “Allosteric activation of vinculin by talin” (Nature Communications, 2023), amassing over 4,700 citations. He has secured major awards such as the EPSRC Early Career Fellowship (2012), Leverhulme Research Leadership Award, Wellcome Trust Investigator Award, Royal Society Wolfson Fellowship, 2012 Spanish Biophysical Society award, and funding from three Marie Curie Actions, BBSRC, Royal Society, British Heart Foundation, and Fight for Sight.