Dr. Surrallés is a doctor in genetics, has postdoctoral experience in the Netherlands (Faculty of Medicine of the University of Leiden) and in Finland (Finnish Institute of Occupational Health). He set up his research team at the UAB, where he is currently a professor of Genetics. He was a member of the UAB Research Commission and director of the Department of Genetics and Microbiology at the same center.

In January 2017, he was appointed Director of the Genetics Service at Hospital Sant Pau. He directs the Biobank of DNA repair syndromes, and the Laboratory of Services on chromosome fragility at the UAB. He is a Principal Investigator at the Center for Rare Diseases Network Biomedical Research (CIBERER), where he acted as a member of the Steering Committee for 10 years.

He is a specialist in the field of cancer predisposition syndromes due to mutations in genes involved in DNA repair, where he has contributed to the discovery of new genes that cause breast and colon cancer, Fanconi anemia, Bloom syndrome and others. Thanks to his extensive research activity, he has enjoyed the ICREA Academy Award since 2008.

He has also directed more than 40 research grants as Principal Investigator awarded by public and private institutions around the world, amounting to more than 5M euros of competitive funding in the last 10 years. He also participates in clinical research including gene therapy clinical trials, has two orphan drug designations by the European Medicines Agency, EMA, is the inventor of 5 patents and leads a series of contracts with private foundations and companies in the Biotech sector. Pharma.

He has given dozens of lectures at international conferences and has published more than 120 publications including articles in Nature, Nature Communications, Nature Medicine, Cell Stem Cells, Blood, Gastroenterology, Am J Hum Genet, Genes and Dev and PNAS. He has directed 16 doctoral theses and dozens of master's students. He is a reviewer for dozens of scientific journals such as Science, Nature, Molecular Cell Biology or Blood and an evaluator for multiple national and international funding agencies such as the European Research Council (ERC), the Agence Nationale de la Recherche-ANR or the French INSERM, Cancer Research UK (United Kingdom) or the Dutch Cancer Society of the Netherlands, among others.

His research is focused on genetic syndromes of predisposition to cancer due to mutations in DNA repair genes, with special emphasis on familial breast cancer and Fanconi anemia. He applies genomic approaches to discover new genes involved in cancer predisposition. He also conducts therapeutic research in the field of gene and cell therapy and drug repositioning through mass screening. The long-term objective of Dr. Surrallés is to understand the mechanisms that maintain the stability of the genome and that protect us from cancer and aging and translate this knowledge into the development of new therapeutic and diagnostic strategies.