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Join the lab within the UVic interns programme

By Jordi Villà i Freixa|2026-09-01T09:31:00+00:00July 6, 2026|CBBL News, Group, Research|

International research internships at the CBBL through the UVic Interns Programme

Are you an international Bachelor’s, Master’s or PhD student interested in spending a research period in our lab?
The Computational Biochemistry and Biophysics Laboratory (CBBL) at UVic-UCC welcomes motivated students who would like to develop an academic traineeship in computational biology, bioinformatics, molecular modelling, omics data analysis, or related areas.

Through the UVic Interns Programme, international students can apply for a research traineeship at UVic-UCC with an educational purpose, while remaining enrolled at their home university.

Our lab works at the interface of computational biochemistry, biophysics, bioinformatics and quantitative biology. Current research interests include molecular simulations, enzyme function and design, protein–ligand and protein–protein interactions, gene regulatory networks, single-cell and omics data analysis, and computational approaches to complex biological systems.

You can learn more about our research here:

Students interested in joining us for a research stay should send a short motivation letter and CV, indicating their academic background, research interests, preferred dates, and whether the traineeship is connected to an Erasmus+, curricular internship, Master’s thesis, PhD mobility stay, or another mobility scheme.

Contact: Jordi Villà-Freixa
jordi.villa@uvic.cat

We look forward to welcoming motivated international students to Vic and to the CBBL.

Visit of professor Yuk Sham, University of Minnesota

By Jordi Villà i Freixa|2026-09-01T09:36:31+00:00September 6, 2024|CBBL News, Group|

Professor Yuk Sham visits the CBBL for a collection of meetings and seminar.

Professor Sham is an expert in molecular simulations, in particular protein-protein and protein-ligand interactions. The work of his laboratory focuses on tools conducting to the rational discovery of drugs, and has a long trajectory in the field of computational biochemistry. During his visit, the current research projects of the CBBL and the ShamLab were explored, in search of synergies and possible collaborations.

New undergrad students in the lab

By Jordi Villà i Freixa|2026-09-01T09:36:45+00:00May 18, 2024|CBBL News, Group|

This late spring, Anna Moya Mujal and David Bedoya Rivera, undergrad students in Biotechnology, have joined our lab to complete their practical training.

Anna has bee working under the supervision of PhD student Roger Casals to set up a protocol in R for cell type labelling and clustering from single cell RNAseq data. Results are avaliable in github.

David have been focussing on testing the use of Markov Models in classifying molecular dynamics simulations, and helping this way our students Pau Domínguez, Ade Raissa and Nayanika Das to progress in their respective projects.

Open position within the INVESTIGO program

By Jordi Villà i Freixa|2026-09-01T09:37:24+00:00April 19, 2023|CBBL News, Group|

A 2 years position within the framework of the INVESTIGO call is now open in the Bioinformatics and Bioimaging research area of the Institut de Recerca i Innovació en Ciències de la Vida i la Salut a la Catalunya Central (IRIS-CC).

Our lab is currently developing a new line on multiomics data analysis, in particular in the interaction between transcriptomics and metabolomics, to understand the dynamics of gene regulation in different tissues and cell types. The candidate (limit of 30 years old, see also other constraints in the specific call below) will have strong programming skills (Python/R), training in Biostatistics, Bioinformatics or related subjects at the level of BSc/MSc and specific interest in massive biological data analysis by means of machine learning techniques.

The work will be carried out in close collaboration with Adrián López García de Lomana (University of Iceland). Working place is the Faculty of Sciences, Technology and Engineering at the UVic-UCC.

Check the details (in Catalan) of the selection process in this file.

Deadline, May 3rd, 2023

A new period for the CBBL

By Jordi Villà i Freixa|2026-09-01T09:38:33+00:00December 21, 2014|CBBL News, Group|

The computational biochemistry and biophysics laboratory was created at the UPF in 2003 and remained there until May 2012, when I moved to the UVic-UCC. After a couple of years of strong managerial work that diverted the main research efforts of the lab, it is now rebuilding with evolved lines of research within the framework of the Bioinformatics and Medical Statistics Research Group. To make the story short, the CBBL devotes more and more to collaborative work with experimentalists, and a number of projects dealing with computational structural biology are being undertaken by the lab members. See the publications page for more details.

On the other hand, the interest of the lab to develop its own tools when needed is more than alive, and the combination between methodological development and applied research is the driving force of our members.

Jordi Villà, nou vicerector de Recerca i de Personal Docent i Investigador de la UVic

By Jordi Villà i Freixa|2026-09-01T09:38:41+00:00July 1, 2014|CBBL News, Group|

A la reunió plenària del Patronat de la Fundació Universitària Balmes, celebrada dijous passat a l’Atlàntida, entre moltes altres qüestions, es va aprovar el nou equip de Rectorat amb la incorporació del Dr. Jordi Villà com a nou vicerector de Recerca i també de de Personal Docent i Investigador.
Més informació: VilaWeb

Janusz Bujnicki at the PRBB

By Dani|2026-09-01T09:39:18+00:00March 13, 2012|CBBL News, Group, Research|

Next Monday March 19 we will host the visit of Dr. Janusz Bujnicki , from the Laboratory of Bioinformatics and Protein Engineering at the International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, Warsaw, Poland.
The conference is included in the PRBB/CRG series of conferences and is open to everybody in the PRBB interested in the subject. It will be at 12:00 in the seminar room Marie Curie on the ground floor.

Seminar Title: “New methods for Structural Bioinformatics of RNA and RNPs”
Host: Jordi Villà i Freixa, Research Group on Biomedical Informatics ( GRIB) IMIM-UPF

Nir Ben Tal, hosted by the CBBL

By Dani|2026-09-01T09:39:34+00:00February 20, 2012|CBBL News, Group|

PRBB-CRG Seminar Reminder: Monday February 20: Nir Ben Tal, University of Tel Aviv, Israel

Today we will host the visit of Dr. Nir Ben Tal, from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, The George S.Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Israel.

The seminar is included in the PRBB-CRG conference series and is open to everybody in the PRBB interested in the subject. It will be at 12 in the seminar room Marie Curie on the ground floor of the PRBB.

Seminar Title: “Human Copper transporter 1: Model Structure, functional dynamics and Selectivity”
Host: Dr.Jordi Villà-Freixa, GRIB, UPF

Nurturing Science

By Dani|2010-09-08T18:44:10+00:00September 8, 2010|Group, Teaching|

Coming back from vacations is never easy, and it is even worst in science. A lot of project proposals and articles to be written and conferences to be improved piled up in your laptop and you did not have the time to finnish even half of them. What is worst, that turn in your research you wanted time to think about didn’t come out as expected. Indeed, taking strong and deeply thought decisions is not an easy task while supervising your 6 to 11 years old kids in a rocky beach in the Costa Brava, climbing a Pyrenees mountain or enjoying a foam party in Vilamaniscle.

So fresh air is always welcome and I found it (as most good science) by chance at Uri Alon’s site. Afterwards (as happens also with most good science, unfortunately…) I realized his paper on “How to Choose a Good Scientific Problem” was extremely highly read. His “Materials for Nurturing Science” have started producing in me a similar effect as the reading of some Feynman’s lectures produced years ago, when a PhD student in Lluch’s and González-Lafont lab. Pessimistic views were (and periodically are) collapsing into what Alon refers as “the cloud”. But some readings and talks (veeeery few) lead us again to the right track, the one that was not initially drawn into our particular history. The wall, that I call sometimes (sorry, link in catalan). At any rate, spending some time having a look at Uri’s “Materials…” is an excellent therapy for the type of people that always reject any type of therapy: scientists…

Anyway, I think reading Uri’s paper and having some time to see his videos is an excellent start for any new PhD student or postdoctoral researcher in my lab, so here are the links for you, if you are thinking on spending the best years of your scientific career (and who knows if also of your life) at the CBBL.

Welcome to the new CBBL site

By Dani|2026-09-01T09:40:47+00:00March 17, 2010|Group, Research, Teaching, Technology transfer|

The new CBBL site is designed to provide easier acces to information and in a more dynamical way. After having developed group web sites since my PhD time in the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, I have gone through the more or less standard process for a (semi-)advanced user: raw HTML pages, small CGI scripting, PHP/MySQL, Plone and…. coming back to a more reasonable approach using the WordPress PHPH/MySQL based system. I am quite happy with this new approach, as it allows concentrating on the content and not on the technicalities. We’ll see how long it takes to get sick of it, a quite common feature of this who writes.

Using the Blog capabilities of the new CBBL site, I’ll try to make a sense of my view of understanding research when other duties allow me to spend some minutes here. As publicly paid staff, researchers are not free to deliver results in the pace and with the global interest we wish, but the ones that the society deserves. In my view, in the same way we are eager to push ourselves to publish more and better every day, such publications should carry information not just important for our ego, but for the society as a whole. That is why we feel sad when a given article, in which we put so much efforts for so long, is after publication forgotten in a obscure library, be analogical or digital. The interest in publishing with high impact should not be seen as an end by itself, but the constant checking of the pace our publications are quoted by others and influence their work is critical.

Research, however, is “just” one of the three legs of our work as teaching staff in public institutions. The other two, teaching and technology transfer, are at least at the same level, in my view. Thus, the CBBL participates with interest in the teaching of several courses and in transferring technology to the commercial world, in order to give back to the society part of the resources we receive.

Last, but not least, researchers are requested to be critical in any part of their work, with themselves and with others. I’ll try not to betray this maxima and be as caustic as politeness allow. Unfortunately, my English is not as good as my native language Catalan and my Spanish, so other non-scientific opinions will be sent to other personal blogs as well, leaving this for issues related to my professional task.

By now, enjoy reading our production and get involved in those areas of the web site that allow such interaction.

As Catalonia is a welcoming country, this blog is also a welcoming blackboard for opinions related to research. Welcome to your home.