MicroArt was founded in 1995 in Catalunya as an Information Technology company, with a clear vision to deliver state of the art solutions for Bioinformatics, Decision Support Systems, Executive Information Systems, Business Intelligence (BI), and specialised training for IT Management and BI.

Role in HealthAgents

Co-ordinate, manage and blend the various workpackages and tasks such that the project progresses in a smooth and timely manner. Furthermore, they contribute with Agent Technology expertise.

Background

In the Bioinformatics field, MicroArt has successful applied computer science technologies to the management of biological information. Specifically, in developing computer databases and algorithms to facilitate and expedite biological research. MicroArt delivers integrated solutions to empower knowledge workers to access data from existing production databases and applications across the enterprise, using advanced data warehousing and decision support tools. They have expert consultants in MicroStrategy, Business Objects, OLAP Server and Forest & Trees. Since 1995, MicroArt has been successfully providing BI consulting services to its clients such as Almirall Prodesfarma, IberAmigo, AENA Menorca and Institut Català de la Tecnologia. In the specialised training arena, the company holds a remarkable collaboration with the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) for over ten years, designing postgraduate courses and coordinating the “IT Management” and “Business Intelligence” master degrees.

 MicroArt is member of the premier Co-ordination Action for Agent Based Computing (AgentLink), funded by the European Commission’s 6th Framework Program and also of a Catalan enterprise association which promotes the professional use of Open Source (catPL).

 Most members of MicroArt’s staff are also members of the Collegi Oficial d’Enginyers en Informàtica de Catalunya, whose members must have a BSc, and which officially represents the IT sector in the Catalan society.

People

Magí Lluch i Ariet Born in Lleida in 1968. He is the main coordinator of HealthAgents. Magi holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) and a M.Eng. in Telematics. Currently he is a Ph.D. candidate in the UOC. He is the managing director of MicroArt, and an part-time lecturer at UOC.  

Mariola Mier Pérez Born in Mexico City in 1974. Msc. in Telematics, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), B.Sc in Computer Science, ITESM- CEM (México), PhD student at the University of Edinburgh. Her main professional activity as Chief Research Officer (CRO), coordinating all R&D projects of the company. She has also a large expertise managing human resources in many IT projects with major organisations. Her current research interests involves distributed systems and agent technology applied in bioinformatics.

Xavier Rafael Palou Born in Barcelona in 1978. B.Sc. in Computer Science by the faculty of Informatics in Barcelona (UPC). His main professional activity is designing and programming of DataBases and general applications using Java technologies. He has also expertise in the field of bioinformatics from previous projects, where he was involved, like in the application of pattern recognition techniques to breast tumours and in the design and development of biomedical data bases. These projects were leaded by the UPC Computer Science department and in the Research department of the company MicroArt.

Roman Roset Mayals Born in Tarragona in 1976. B.Sc. in Computer Science, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). He was working for BSC (Barcelona Supercomputing Center-www.bsc.es) programming parallel bioinformatics applications on Marenostrum and others ibm computers. He was also working in the National Institute of Bioinformatics (www.inb.es) like development project manager programming with webservices technologies. Currently he is a Ph.D. student of the Artificial Intelligence in the UPC, and he is working in the Research area of Microart.

Other projects

MicroArt has also a strong collaboration with main Universities in its area, namely the UPC, UOC, and UAB, and has co-developed: the TIC2000-0168-P4-04 “Servidor de información World Wide Web de la Comisión Científica al Pacífico (II): Sistemas de Difusión Digital del Patrimonio Cultural”, Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnologia, Dir Gral de Investigación, Coord: “Centro Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC). FIT-150500-2003-491 “Business Agents”, Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnologia, Dir Gral para el Desarrollo de la Sociedad de la Información, Coord: MicroArt. MCYT SAF 2002-00440 “Mejora Del Diagnóstico y de la Valoración Pronóstica de Tumores Cerebrales Humanos In-Vivo y En Modelos Animales de la Patología”, Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnologia, Coord: UAB. IST-1999-10310, MRS decision support tool (DSS) for tumour diagnosis (INTERPRET) EC 5FP-UE, Coord: UAB. LSHC-CT-2004-503094, Web-accessible DSS, incorporating genomic and metabolomic data, and its diagnostic performance validated in a clinical demonstration of added value (eTUMOUR), EC 6FP-UE, Coord: UVEG.