Data stewardship and solutions for life sciences. We develop data and information solutions for academic and commercial research. We are experts in designing, collecting, organising and presenting data and offer a unique combination of technical and scientific expertise to build data management solutions that don’t compromise on project requirements.
PINK introduces an open innovation platform for the industry, offering computational approaches for AdMas&Chems development, safety assessment, and AI techniques for data searches. The project translates industrial requirements and market demands into decision support and addresses training needs. It culminates in an integrated PINKISH Platform, providing decision support through data visualization and Generative AI technologies, while also developing an advanced Interoperability Framework for equitable information exchange.
INSIGHT will establish an innovative framework for the mechanistic impact assessment of chemicals and materials. This framework will use a multi-layered approach that integrates data, models, and impact outcome pathway graphs, providing user-friendly FAIR-data and computational tools. It aims to transform sustainability and safety assessments and make advanced AI methods accessible for Safe and Sustainable by Design approaches.
MACRAMÉ will develop methodologies applicable to AdMas. It will detect, characterize and quantify AdMas during their processing and product life cycle, including recycling/end-of-life, to assess the resulting impact on health and the environment. It will prepare for standardization and harmonization, as well as regulatory validation, the wide-spread applicability and application of the developed test and characterisation methods.
CHIASMA uses innovative in vitro and in silico methods to develop a new framework for assessing safety and sustainability by design. Based on next-generation safety assessment principles, this framework will predict regulatory endpoints and long-term safety while integrating life-cycle impact analysis. The project addresses different chemical groups, including per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances and nanopesticides, with a focus on socio-economic aspects and regulatory integration.
BIO-SUSHY will develop innovative repellent organic and hybrid coatings, harnessing bio-based additives for advanced functionalization as an alternative to PFASs-based coatings. A safe-and-sustainable-by-design strategy will be powered by physics-based and data-driven modelling tools for predicting the repellent properties of coating surfaces and the leaching mechanisms of the materials. A life-cycle assessment will determine the economic and environmental impacts along the value chains of the case studies considered for the validation of the BIO-SUSHY coating materials.
NanoCommons will deliver a sustainable and openly accessible nanoinformatics framework (knowledgebase and integrated computational tools, supported by expert advice, data interpretation and training), for assessment of the risks of nano materials, their products and their formulations. NanoCommons combines Joint Research Activities to implement the nanoinformatics Knowledge Commons, Networking Activities to facilitate engagement with the research community, industry and regulators, and provision of funded Access to the nanoinformatics tools via funded calls for Transnational Access.
We were invited to give a presentation at the 5th Safe and Sustainable by Design Stakeholders Workshop organised by the European Commission. This was a great opportunity to present the road we took starting with the MACRAMÉ Project and now continuing in PINK to describe advanced materials at specific life cycle stages and how this should become part of data documentation in an European materials data ecosystem.
As part of our involvement as European co-chair of the U.S.-EU Nanotechnology Communities of Research, we organise a session on “The Importance of International Collaborations in Nanoscience and Advanced Materials Environmental Health and Safety” for the EU IndTech 2025, the EU event for discussing state-of-the-art technologies, challenges and trends. It explores the critical needs related to next-generation plastics and the importance of AI as well as international knowledge exchange for their safe and sustainable development.
Three of our projects just published their goals and ambitions in the form of Innovation Reports in CSBJ: Nanoscience and Advanced Materials: “Going digital to boost safe and sustainable materials innovation markets. The digital safe-and-sustainability-by-design innovation approach of the PINK project”, “MACRAMÉ – Advanced characterisation methodologies to assess and predict the health and environmental risks of advanced materials”, and “INSIGHT: An integrated framework for safe and sustainable chemical and material assessment”.
To understanding and document material and data flows in complex projects like the assessment of (nano)materials along their life cycle or the development of safe and sustainable materials, we have developed a tool implementing the concept of instance maps or better study design maps. These maps visualise experimental workflows in the form of material stages and transformations between these and are now building the backbones of the data management in the MACRAMÉ, BIO-SUSHY and CHIASMA projects. Read more about the tool and its application to nanosafety in our paper “Instance maps as an organising concept for complex experimental workflows as demonstrated for (nano)material safety research” published in the Beilstein Journal of Nanotechnology.
Together with Steffi Friedrich (AcumenIST), we organised the Session "Sustainability through the Materials Modelling and Data Ecosystem of the Future" including a panel discussion at the 5th EMMC International Workshop 2025. It brought together sustainability and digitalisation experts and thought leaders to explore how data-driven collaboration, federated systems, and clear regulation can enable resilient, sustainable innovation in materials science.