News archive

13/11/2024 - At the Biocontrol Workshop

Today we have presented a poster at the Biocontrol Workshop 2024. Co-authored by Antón, Sandra, Alexandru, Alex, and Antonis Papachristodoulou (Oxford), it highlights results from our latest arxiv preprint.

11/11/2024 - New preprints

We have a couple of recent papers in arxiv: "Observability rank conditions for analysing practical identifiability a priori" (arXiv:2410.06984) and "Analysing control-theoretic properties of nonlinear synthetic biology circuits" (arXiv:2411.05450).

18/10/2024 - DYNAMO-bio kick-off meeting

Today we have had the first meeting of our new project, DYNAMO-bio, which is funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities. We have put together a great group of scientists (and friends), and we are looking forward to collaborating with them!

19/09/2024 - Talk at MATRIX workshop

Today I am giving a talk at the MATRIX workshop on Parameter Identifiability in Mathematical Biology held in Creswick, Victoria, Australia. Really thankful to MATRIX and the organisers, Mat, Ruth, Oliver, and Jennifer, for inviting me... and congratulations for putting up such a nice event!

16/09/2024 - Among the top 2% Scientists Worldwide 2024 (Stanford University list)

Stanford University has recently released an update of the list that represents the top 2 percent of the most-cited scientists in various disciplines. Alejandro F. Villaverde is among the many scientists from the Universidade de Vigo included in the "single year" list.

26/08/2024 - Incoming & outcoming students

Today we are welcoming Dorin Alexandru Ionescu to our group. Alexandru is a master student (M2i-UDC) who will work as an intern on the analysis of methods for relative observability. Two other master students (Biomedical Eng-UVIGO), Sara Eguizábal and Antón Pardo, have already finished their internships.

10/07/2024 - Visit from Warwick

This week we are hosting two visitors from the University of Warwick: Alex Darlington and Carlos Sequeiros. We are starting to work with the Darlington group on the related topics of experimental design for host-aware biotech engineering (EPSRC project), and modelling and analysis of microbial systems (Spanish AEI project). Looking forward to a fruitful collaboration!

18/06/2024 - Welcome, Adriana!

Today we are welcoming a new member of the group, Adriana González Vázquez. Adriana studied Biomedical Engineering (BEng'23, MEng'24) at the universities of Vigo and Barcelona. She will participate in several research projects of the BICO group. Looking forward to working together!

15/05/2024 - Talk at the Ourense campus

Today I will give a talk at the ESEI, which is the school of computer science of the Universidade de Vigo. Titled "Modelado Computacional de Biosistemas Dinámicos", it is part of the "ESEI Grado 2" seminar series. You are all welcome to join!

17/04/2024 - Visit and talk by Alexey Ovchinnikov

This week we are hosting Professor Alexey Ovchinnikov, from CUNY, who is also visiting our colleague Julio R. Banga (MBG-CSIC). On Wednesday, Alexey will give a seminar on "Differential algebra based algorithm for parameter estimation in ODE models" at CITMAga. Looking forward to discuss math and dynamical systems with him!

10/04/2024 - At the CEA symposium in Vigo

This week we are attending the joint symposium of the CEA topic groups on Control Engineering (IC) and on Modelling, Simulation and Optimization (MSO). It is organized by our colleagues at IIM-CSIC.

01/04/2024 - New project: SICOMORO

Today is the starting date of a new project: "Searching and exploiting Symmetries In biological Communities: Modelling, Reachability, and Observability (SICOMORO)". It is a 2 year grant (CNS2023-144886) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033.

21/03/2024 - Recognition as one of the EEI's top valued instructors

Alejandro F. Villaverde received an award as one the top valued instructors (voted by the students) at the annual celebration of the Universidade de Vigo's School of Industrial Engineering (EEI).

06/03/2024 - New fellowship for Xabier

Xabier Rey Barreiro has been awarded a PhD fellowship from the Universidade de Vigo. This is a competitive call with a success ratio of 20%; Xabier's application was ranked 1st among 14 submitted in the Technological field.

06/02/2024 - Among the top 2% Scientists Worldwide 2023 (Stanford University list)

Stanford University has recently released an update of the list that represents the top 2 percent of the most-cited scientists in various disciplines. Alejandro F. Villaverde is among the 33 scientists from the Universidade de Vigo included in the "single year" list.

01/12/2023 - Welcome to Antón Pardo Fernández

We have a new intern at the BICO group (he's already been around for a while, actually!): Antón Pardo Fernández, a student at the Master in Biomedical Engineering, is joining us for a few months with a "Colaboración con departamentos" fellowship from the Universidade de Vigo. He is working on the accessibility and controllability analysis of nonlinear circuits in synthetic biology.

15/11/2023 - Invited talk at the Universität Kassel

Last week I was invited by Prof. Werner Seiler to travel to Kassel (Hessen, Germany). I gave a talk about "Studying biosystems robustness, uncertainty, and other properties through symmetry analysis" at the research training group Multiscale Clocks. Lots of interesting discussions -- and ideas for future collaborations!

06/10/2023 - New paper

"Controllability and accessibility analysis of nonlinear biosystems" has been published at Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine: doi:10.1016/j.cmpb.2023.107837. In this paper we provide implementations of algorithms for testing nonlinear accessibility and controllability, and apply them to several systems of biomedical interest.

28/08/2023 - SELDOMpy released

SELDOMpy is a python version of SELDOM, a method for building predictive signalling models. SELDOMpy has been developed by Luis Prado López under the supervision of David Henriques and Alejandro F. Villaverde. It is available in PyPI and GitHub.

21/07/2023 - PhD thesis defense

Today, Gemma Massonis Feixas has successfully defended her PhD thesis. Entitled "Contributions to mechanistic modelling in systems biology: identifiability, symmetries and uncertainty quantification", it was co-supervised by Julio R. Banga and Alejandro F. Villaverde. Congratulations, Dr. Massonis!

20/07/2023 - Participation in CINBIO's 6th Annual Meeting

Today, Sandra and Xabier are presenting posters at the CINBIO 6AM, which is the Annual Meeting of the Centre for Biomedical Research at the Universidade de Vigo.

10/07/2023 - Talk at SIAM AG23

This week, Alejandro F Villaverde is attending the SIAM conference in Algebraic Geometry ( SIAM AG23) in Eindhoven, to give a talk entitled "How Often Do We Encounter Locally-But-Not-Globally-Identifiable Parameters in Systems Biology, and Why?".

22/06/2023 - New paper

"On the origins and rarity of locally but not globally identifiable parameters in biological modeling" has been accepted at IEEE Access: doi:10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3288998. In this paper, Xabier Rey Barreiro and Alejandro F Villaverde investigate the difference between local and global identifiability in systems biology models.

13/06/2023 - Visit and talk by Werner Seiler

This week we are hosting two visitors from Uni-Kassel: Prof. Werner Seiler and Meskerem Abebaw Mebratie. Today, Werner gave a talk titled "(Approximate) Symmetries of Differential Equations". Lots of intriguing stuff, with connections to identifiability and other structural properties. Looking forward to a fruitful collaboration!

18/04/2023 - New paper

Titled "Structural Identifiability and Observability of Microbial Community Models", it is included in a special issue of Bioengineering on "Role of Computational Methods for Living Systems at Different Scales": doi:10.3390/bioengineering10040483.

19-21/04/2023 - Participation in the II joint symposium of CEA's topic groups on Control Engineering and MSO

The BICO team will travel to Madrid to attend the "II Simposio Conjunto Grupos Temáticos CEA Ingeniería de Control y Modelado, Simulación y Optimización" (website), where Sandra and Xabier will discuss the progress of their PhD theses and present early results.

14/04/2023 - Participation in CITMAga CoLab days

I (Alex) will participate in CITMAga CoLab days, an event that seeks to engage researchers from CITMAga in new collaborations. The topic I will propose is the possible use of symmetries for reachability analysis of dynamical biosystems. Looking forward to a fruitful exchange of ideas!

16/03/2023 - New preprint

Titled "Distilling identifiable and interpretable dynamic models from biological data", it reports the latest results of a collaboration with Gemma Massonis and Julio R. Banga (MBG-CSIC). Check it out at bioRxiv here: doi:10.1101/2023.03.13.532340.

15/03/2023 - Upcoming talk by Alexander Browning

Dr. Alexander Browning (Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford) will visit the BICO team next monday, March 27th. At 11:00 he will give a talk about Identifying cell-to-cell variability using mathematical and statistical modelling at the "Aula de Grao", Escola de Enxeñaría Industrial, sede Campus (42.16803077019169, -8.689819747823226). Everybody is welcome to attend!

24/02/2023 - Upcoming seminar by Sandra Díaz Seoane

Sandra will talk about Propiedades estructurales en sistemas biológicos para control óptimo on March 1st, 17:00, as part of CITMAga's "seminarios de iniciación á investigación". More info here.

01/02/2023 - A new paper published in Bioinformatics

Our comparison of software tools that analyse structural identifiability and observability, which until now was only available as an arxiv preprint, has now been published in Bioinformatics.

11/11/2022 - STRIKE-GOLDD 4.0.3 released

The new release of the STRIKE-GOLDD toolbox avoids some approximation errors that might appear when analysing models with complex output functions. As always, it can be downloaded from its GitHub website.