About B2SLab
Bioinformatics and Biomedical Signals Laboratory · UPC Barcelona
Goals
Welcome to the Bioinformatics and Biomedical Signals Laboratory (B2SLab) at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) in Barcelona, Spain. As a multidisciplinary research group within the Institute for Research and Innovation in Health (IRIS), we specialise in biomedical engineering, bioinformatics, machine learning, and statistics, with over two decades of expertise in these fields.
Our Mission
At B2SLab, our mission is to advance healthcare through innovative research and the development of cutting-edge technologies. We aim to bridge the gap between data science and biomedical applications, contributing to improved patient outcomes and a deeper understanding of complex biological systems.
Our Team
Research Focus
Our research is organised around five strategic goals:
Foundational Models in Health: This is our primary and most ambitious research direction. We develop large-scale AI models — transformers and multimodal architectures — trained on real-world clinical data (electronic health records, emergency department data) to create reusable foundations for clinical decision support, disease trajectory prediction, and personalised medicine. We believe foundation models represent the most transformative opportunity for AI in healthcare.
Rare Diseases: We combine patient data platforms, computational phenotyping, and in silico modelling to improve diagnosis and accelerate research for underserved rare disease populations, in close collaboration with Hospital Sant Joan de Déu.
Metabolomics: We develop methods for untargeted and targeted metabolomic data analysis — from feature annotation to biomarker discovery — applied primarily to metabolic disease and cardiovascular risk.
Climate Change & Sensors: We build AI platforms linking environmental and meteorological data to clinical outcomes, deploy low-cost sensor networks for ecosystem monitoring, and pursue a broad programme of chemosensor and air quality research.
Industrial Doctorates: We supervise doctoral researchers embedded in partner organisations (hospitals and companies), combining rigorous academic research with real-world deployment.
Key Projects and Tools
We are proud to have developed several impactful tools and projects:
DARE: A transformer-based encoder pre-trained on over 200,000 diabetic patients from the SIDIAP primary healthcare database, for predicting disease trajectories and treatment changes in Type 2 Diabetes. (Foundation Models project)
FELLA: An R package for the enrichment and interpretation of metabolomics data, facilitating the identification of affected pathways and biological functions. (Bioconductor)
diffuStats: An R package that computes and benchmarks diffusion scores on biological networks, aiding in the analysis of molecular interactions. (Bioconductor)
Share4Rare: A data science platform supporting 5,000+ rare disease patients and caregivers across 50+ countries. (share4rare.org)
Collaborations and Community Engagement
We actively collaborate with research networks and institutions across Europe. Our coordination of Xartec Salut — a network of 122 research groups dedicated to health technology transfer in Catalonia — reflects our commitment to translating research into real-world impact.
Connect with Us
Stay updated on our latest research and developments by following us on Mastodon (we are not on — and will not register for — X/Twitter): Mastodon
For more information about our projects, publications, and team members, please visit our official website: b2slab.upc.edu
Help us
You can contribute to our research in many ways:
- By using our research and software
- By opening issues to provide feedback and share ideas
- By proposing collaborations and joining our lab