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Members of Bioinformatics Barcelona. Photo: BIB.
 05.07.2015

Launch of the Bioinformatics Barcelona Association

Monday saw the launch of the Bioinformatics Barcelona Association (BIB), a network of 25 members including universities, research centres, hospitals, pharmaceutical and  technology and bioinformatics companies, among them the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), the Centro Nacional de Análisis Genómico (CNAG-CRG), Mind the Byte and Sequentia Biotech, located at the Barcelona Science Park (PCB). The BIB association seeks to engage all the member organisations in initiatives and dynamic collaborations in advanced research, knowledge transfer, and training, in order to position Barcelona and Catalonia as an international reference in bioinformatics.

 

BIB seeks to set in motion advanced research initiatives in knowledge and tech transfer between research groups, hospital centres, and the biotech, pharmaceutical and agro-food business sectors. In addition to the 25 member organizations, 23 further bodies have shown interest and are in the process of being incorporated. BIB’s first board of directors comprises the chair Dr. Ana Ripoll, Professor of architecture and computers technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB); the secretary Dr. Arcadi Navarro, Director of the Department of Experimental and Heath Sciences of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF); and the treasurer Dr.Alfons Nonell, CEO and founder of Mind the Byte.

Bioinformatics is a research field in which computational sciences and information technologies are applied to the treatment of biological data. This multidisciplinary activity widens the potential of knowledge generation and tech transfer. Bioinfomatics is used in the health sciences and has a great impact on many fields, including the health sector, the food industry, and biotechnology in general.

In recent years, bioinformatics has become a strategic field of science to interpret enormous amounts of data (big data)—which continue to grow exponentially. In this regard, the current bioscientific challenge is the management and exploitation of these data and their conversion into new knowledge with a socioeconomic impact.

BIB will act as a catalyst for initiatives in advanced research and knowledge and technology transfer between research groups, hospitals and the business sector, as well as the development of training programmes in bioinformatics. Moreover, it aims to implement programmes to train specialists, thus responding to the demands for a range of bioinformatician profiles.

To achieve its goals, BIB will cooperate with all the agents and actors involved (administration, universities and knowledge centres, enterprises and society) with the objective to generate initiatives and dynamic collaborations that allow Barcelona and Catalonia to position themselves as a leading scientific cluster and strategic hub in the south of Europe, thanks to a highly competitive environment and privileged geographical location.

The first initiative launched by BIB has been the design of pioneering training programme throughout Spain. On the one hand, it has set up a 2-year training programme in informatics with an orientation of bioinformatics, which will start in the academic year 2015-16, and on the other hand, it has designed the curriculum of the first interuniversity degree in bioinformatics in the Catalan higher education system. This 3-year course will be launched in 2016-17.

Bioinformatics Barcelona is also supported by the Government of Catalonia and the Obra Social “la Caixa”.