Romain Quidant (35 years old, Dijon, France) is a Doctor of Physical Sciences. He is internationally acknowledged as a researcher, his main field of study being the application of light in medicine. Romain Quidant's project is a multidisciplinary study combining the latest advances in nanotechnology, photonics, biochemistry and oncology with the aim of developing new techniques for the early detection of diverse types of cancer and their treatment by minimally invasive procedures. In order to improve cancer diagnosis and make it more accessible, the project is developing a new miniaturized platform based on gold nanoparticles that is capable of detecting very low concentrations of cancer markers. Likewise, the project studies the use of gold nanoparticles designed to act as heat nanosources which, on being illuminated by laser light, destroy cancer cells in a highly selective way without affecting healthy tissues.

Romain Quidant was the initiator of plasmonics research at the Barcelona Photonic Sciences Institute (ICFO) in the year 2000 and he was appointed junior research group leader on plasmonic nanophotonics in 2006. Later, he joined the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) in 2009. That same year he was awarded the Fresnel Prize by the European Physical Society as the Best Young European Researcher in the field of Photonics. In 2010 he received the prestigious Starting Grant of the European Research Council (ERC) and he was the recipient of the City of Barcelona Prize in the category of scientific research. Even though he is still a young researcher, Quidant is now the European coordinator of SPEDOC, a project financed by the European Commission which has the participation of industries and hospitals and is addressed to the transfer of the technology in his field of study to the work of oncologists in clinical practice.