Oriol Planas was born in La Jonquera, a border town located in north Catalunya. He graduated in chemistry in 2012 from the University of Girona and performed MSc studies under the supervision of Dr. Miquel Costas and Dr. Anna Company, studying the chemistry of high-valent iron-oxo compounds.  In 2013, he started pursuing doctoral studies in the group of Dr. Xavi Ribas and Dr. Anna Company. During this period, he focused his research on unveiling the intricacies of the fundamental steps of cobalt-catalyzed C–H activation transformations. In 2016, he moved to Irvine (CA, USA) for a scientific stay in the laboratory of Prof. Vy M. Dong.

After obtaining his PhD in 2018, he moved to Germany, where he joined the group of Dr. Josep Cornellà (Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung) as a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow. In Mülheim an der Ruhr, he worked on the development of organic transformations based on the redox properties of bismuth.

He started his independent career at Queen Mary University of London, to then move to Imperial College London in 2025. There, his group studies fundametally new compounds based on earth-abundant d- and p-block elements with the goal of developing unique catalytic methods.