(Feb 2018)Manuel Desco reached the degrees of MD, MSEng and PhD, and is specialist in Nuclear Medicine. He is Head of the Research Dept. of the Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón and Professor of Radiology in the Bioengineering and Aerospace Engineering Dept. of the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. He is also senior scientist at Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC). He chaired the Spanish Platform on Technological Innovation in Hospitals (ITEMAS) from 2009 to 2018. He has worked as medical practitioner, entrepreneur and researcher in Biomedical Engineering. His research activities have mainly addressed the field of medical imaging, including the development of advanced techniques for image acquisition (MRI, PET, etc.) and image processing, either for quantification, multimodality registration or computer aided diagnosis. A significant amount of work has been devoted to the development of high-performance devices for small-animal molecular imaging, used in biomedical research. He has supervised 22 PhD Theses, published more than 500 papers and has participated or coordinated more than 80 national / international research projects and excellence networks (for instance, “Molecular and Multimodality Medical Imaging”, IM3, with 29 groups or ITEMAS, with more than 170 members). He has 30 patents and software registers, and several developments from his Laboratory have reached exploitation, being transferred to the industry and becoming commercial products with worldwide distribution. Some relevant awards received were the UNICEM prize to technological innovation (2004) and Galien prize to best research trajectory (2008) or the award to innovative researcher 2013 from the Spanish forum of innovative enterprises. He is full member of the Spanish Academy of Medicine and Surgery (2014).