Universitat Rovira i Virgili

Welcome to MiL@b

Xavier Correig

Metabolomics has become a scientific field of maximum interest and usefulness for life sciences. The innovation in instrumental techniques on which it is based, as well as in the automation of the analysis of the data that makes possible the quantification and identification of compounds, are ideal paradigms for multidisciplinary research, in which engineers have a very important participation. The MiL@b research group, which originated in the Metabolomics Platform in 2007, is a multidisciplinary group that is conducting frontier research in metabolomics, with the collaboration of first-class biomedical and clinical research groups.
Francesc Xavier Correig Blanchart, Principal Investigator (PI)

The Metabolomics Interdisciplinary Laboratory (MIL@b) research group belongs to the Department of Electronic, Electrical and Automatic Engineering of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) and the Institut d'Investigació Sanitària Pere Virgili (IISPV) and it is aimed to advance scientific and technological knowledge in metabolomics. This science is devoted to the global study of the low molecular weight chemical compounds found in the biofluids and tissues of living organisms.

The expertise of MIL@b research team is at the interface of biomedical data analysis and software engineering, biochemistry and metabolism, and analytical chemistry.

The team is developing new and open-access metabolomic data processing algorithms and compound identification strategies, using multivariate analysis tools, machine learning approaches, and publicly available and commercial databases. The algorithms are mainly intended to improve data analysis by using the leading analytical platforms in metabolomics: GC-MS, LC-MS, MALDI-MS and HR-NMR.

Our team

MIL@b is a multidisciplinary research group formed by chemists, biologists, biochemists and engineers (telecommunications, computer science, biomedical, etc.), which has had the support and funding of the Generalitat de Catalunya in the latest AGAUR calls (SGR2009, SGR2014 and SGR2017). We have access to state-of-the-art Mass Spectrometry and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance instrumentation at the Centre for Omic Sciences (COS) and at the Servei de Recursos Científics i Tècnics (SRCiT) of the URV.

The MiL@b has a marked translational character: it is interconnected with the Metabolomics Platform (a scientific and technical infrastructure created in 2007 by the URV), the CIBERDEM and the IISPV, whose mission is to collaborate and provide metabolomic services to biomedical and clinical research groups. The MIL@b has an extensive network of scientific collaborators in Catalonia (CERCA centres and universities), Spain (CIBER), Europe, and the USA. The MiL@b plays a leading role in metabolomics in Catalonia and Spain by coordinating the Spanish Metabolomics Network (MetaboRed).