Brightlands Materials Center (BMC)

Welcome to our world of plastics!
Polymeric materials, or plastics, offer great opportunities for a large variety of new applications. For a sustainable world, a circular economy, and therefore the end-of-use of plastics based applications, is an important factor the Brightlands Materials center considers.

The world population will continue to grow in the 21st century to become nine billion by 2050. The need for new sustainable products and materials will grow with it as well. This asks for an efficient way of using and re-using materials. The Brightlands Materials Center will take up this responsibility and dedicate its research and development programs and other activities to a sustainable society.

The Brightlands Materials Center fuels the polymeric field with knowledge, talent and entrepreneurship by bringing universities, students, industry leaders and business professionals all together in shared research programs and the inspiring community of the Brightlands Materials Center.

The themes of our research address major societal challenges such as sustainable energy, mobility, and health & well-being. These research themes can also be related to Horizon 2020, the European Commission’s proposal for the next EU programme for research and innovation, a pivotal part of the Europe 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and economic growth.

Additive Manufacturing - Health & Well-being

Lightweight Automotive - Mobility

Sustainable Buildings - Sustainable Energy

The shared research programs are supported by specific expertise in the field of Technology Platforms. These are fields of conceptual or generic knowledge that can be used to study complex application problems. The Center develops new applications only if and when building on core technological strengths. As a basic principle, the Technology Platform should be able to serve solving issues in multiple application areas within the shared research programs. This will automatically lead to innovation, as the learnings from one application can be used for other applications.