Leibniz Research Alliance
Advanced Materials Safety
Our vision: The responsible development of functional and safe materials
Advanced materials, with their hierarchical structure of micro- and nanoscale building blocks, are foundations for innovative technologies. Their complex structure results in new challenges in assessing the safety of these materials throughout their life cycle. Within the Leibniz Research Alliance Advanced Materials Safety, we are pursuing a multidisciplinary approach that integrates safe materials design, future-proof safety assessment, science communication and research data management. Close collaboration between researchers from different disciplines is a prerequisite for safe and sustainable innovations that are accepted by consumers and the public.
Specific case studies will be addressed in a joint framework of graduate training and exchange. The project will be supported by the development of a FAIR-compatible research data infrastructure that
addresses the needs of materials safety research.
Our main objectives:
Develop design concepts for safer and sustainable, functional and accepted advanced materials
using exemplary energy materials and biomedical applications: Synthesis and characterization of
advanced materials, modelling of toxicologically relevant material properties, detection of these
materials in the abiotic environment, safe-by-design.
- Develop design concepts for safer and sustainable, functional and accepted advanced materials using exemplary energy materials and biomedical applications: Synthesis and characterization of advanced materials, modelling of toxicologically relevant material properties, detection of these materials in the abiotic environment, safe-by-design.
- Determination and prediction of the effects of advanced materials on human health and organisms in the environment: accumulation and interaction with organisms, development of predictive models to determine ecological, biological, and toxicological effects, elucidation of molecular
mechanisms and key events - Awareness and knowledge transfer related to advanced materials and their sustainable application: development of methods for science education, knowledge uptake and transfer to the public,and from the public back to the scientific community
In order to be able to do justice to the multi-faceted nature of the project, the research alliance brings together researchers from twelve Leibniz Institutes with different areas of expertise: Materials Sciences, Biology and Toxicology, Computer Science, Educational Sciences and Science Communication.
Dr. Roel Schins from IUF – Leibniz Research Institute for Environmental Medicine and Prof. Andreas Fery from the Leibniz Institute of Polymer Research Dresden e.V. (IPF) are spokespersons of the research alliance. The INM coordinates the activities of the research alliance.
Contact at INM:
Dr. Christiane Petzold
Coordinator Leibniz Research
Alliance Advanced Materials Safety
INM – Leibniz Institute
for New Materials gGmbH
0681-9300-272
[email protected]