Degree in computer science from Universitat Jaume I (1996) and a doctoral degree from the University of Oxford (2000). I was a senior researcher at Toshiba Medical Systems (Japan), INRIA (France), and the University of Bern (Switzerland). From 2008 until September 2013 I was in charge of the Research Department of the company Alma IT Systems. In October 2013 I was appointed ICREA Research Professor, and joined the Department of Engineering at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, where I founded the Barcelona Centre for New Medical Technologies (BCN Medtech). I have more than 500 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals and conferences, and have supervised 27 PhD theses. I have led numerous research projects, including the ERC Synergy project Zee-Zoom-Zap. I am a co-founder and scientific advisor of the company MiWEndo Solutions S.L., and a Visiting Scientist at the QUANTIC research group of Barcelona Supercomputing Center, where I focus on quantum machine learning.
Research interests
My research focus is on computerised medical image analysis and computer-assisted surgery, including image processing and computer vision, image-based diagnosis through machine learning and deep learning, medical imaging physics, computational modelling and simulation of virtual organs and surgical interventions, navigation in computer-assisted surgery, surgical devices and implants, and applied clinical research. In addition to basic research with solid mathematical foundations, all my projects have a marked translational character, focusing on concrete clinical and industrial applications.
Selected publications
- Comte V, Alenyà M, Urru A, Recober J, Nakaki A, Crovetto F, Camara O, Gratacós E, Eixarch E, Crispi F, Piella G, Ceresa M & González Ballester MA 2025, 'Deep cascaded registration and weakly-supervised segmentation of fetal brain MRI', Heliyon, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. e40148:1-18 ().
- Urru A, Benkarim O, Marti G, Hahner N, Piella G, Eixarch E & González & Ballester MA 2025, 'Longitudinal assessment of abnormal cortical folding in fetuses and neonates with isolated non-severe ventriculomegaly', Brain and Behavior, vol. 15, no. e70255, pp 1-13.
- OK Sikha, González Ballester MA & Benitez R 2025, 'Unveiling learning trends in CNNs with Dynamic Mode Decomposition', Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, vol. 144, no. 110146, pp 1-13.
- Martín Saladich Q, Simó R, Herance JR & González Ballester MA 2025, 'MIRA: Myocardial insulin resistance app for clinical practice', Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine, vol. 263(108674), pp. 1-8.
- Sikha OK, Riera-Marin M, Galdran A, García J, Rodríguez-Comas J, Piella G & González Ballester MA 2025, 'Uncertainty-aware segmentation quality prediction via deep learning Bayesian modeling: comprehensive evaluation and interpretation', Computerized Medical Imaging and Graphics, vol. 123(102547), pp. 1-12.
- Sikha OK, Stone A & González Ballester MA, 2025, 'Meta-UNet: enhancing skin-lesion segmentation with multi-modal feature integration and uncertainty estimation', International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery, vol. 20, pp 1911-1922.
- Natarajan S, Tiulpin A, Karppinen J, Humbert L & González Ballester MA 2025, 'MRI2Mesh: High-resolution intervertebral disc mesh generation from anisotropic MRI through attention-guided cross level graph feature fusion', IEEE Access, vol. 13, pp. 209282-209298.
Selected research activities
In 2025, I was awarded an ERC Synergy grant to develop the project "Zee-Zoom-Zap: a new paradigm for cancer theranostics."