UPFR PRESS
05/08/2026
On 30 July, Mireia Vallès-Colomer, researcher and member of the teaching staff at Pompeu Fabra UniversitY and leader of The Microbiome Research Group at GRIB, was presented with National Research Award from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities. Vallès-Colomer received the Margarita Salas Award, which recognizes outstanding research in biology by researchers under the age of 40.
According to the Ministry, the award presented to Mireia Vallès-Colomer, director of the Microbiome Research Group in the Department of Medicine and Life Sciences (MELIS) and GRIB, acknowledges her “research linking the gut microbiome to mental health”. She also, remarked that the award has given her “a renewed burst of energy […]. Having our work recognized gives meaning to the immense amount of time and effort we devote to it and confirms that the seemingly risky decision to return home and continue conducting research at the highest level was indeed correct.”
The young researcher, who has led her research group in MELIS-UPF since 2023 after completing her education in Leuven (Belgium) and Trento (Italy), added: “It is an honour to receive an award that bears the name of a leading figure such as Margarita Salas. At the same time, the fact I am the first woman to receive it shows that there is still much progress to be made.”
About Mireia
Mireia Vallès-Colomer is a tenure-track lecturer and principal investigator at Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), where she heads the Microbiome Research Group in MELIS-UPF. With degrees in Microbiology and Computational Biology from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium), her research centres on the role of the human microbiome in mental health and the mechanisms underlying its transmission between individuals.
As a PhD student in the laboratory of Dr Raes at VIB–KU Leuven (Belgium), she led the first population-based study linking the composition and function of the gut microbiome to anxiety and depression. This research, published in Nature Microbiology (2019), systematically characterized the production and degradation of neuroactive compounds using metagenomic data and was singled out by Nature Milestones 2019 as a key contribution to human microbiome research. Later, as an EMBO postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Dr Segata at the University of Trento (Italy), she demonstrated the multigenerational transmission of the gut microbiome within families (Nature Microbiology, 2022) and led the first large-scale characterization of person-to-person transmission networks of oral and gut microbiomes (Nature, 2023), establishing a population-level framework to investigate the social transmission of microbes.
She currently leads a team of seven researchers focused on developing and applying computational and statistical methods to analyse the relationship between microbiome composition, social transmission dynamics and mental health. Her scientific output has amassed over 15,000 citations, and, in 2025, she was recognized by Clarivate as a Highly Cited Researcher, placing her in the top 1% of the most cited researchers worldwide.
You can read more about it here