Research

bioprocesses

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The BICO team is a small subgroup of the larger Nonlinear Control Group in the Department of Systems Engineering & Automatic Control of the Universidade de Vigo. BICO stands for Biosystems Identification, Control and Optimization (and, coincidentally, it is also the Galician word for "kiss").

Our research is centered in the modeling of dynamical systems, with a focus on biological applications (systems biology). We develop methodologies for identification and analysis of nonlinear models, using techniques from optimization and systems and control theory.

We are particularly interested in (structural) identifiability and observability. Other topics include controllability and reachability, parameter estimation, uncertainty quantification, and bioprocess optimization and control.

We apply these technics mainly to biomedical and biotechnological applications, including metabolism, cell signalling, gene regulation, immunology, epidemiology, pharmacokinetics, and industrial bioprocesses, among other areas.

As a general policy, we provide open source, freely accessible computational implementations of the methods that we develop (see software).