BNN Brings Safety and Sustainability of Materials to European Researchers’ Night

The Safe-and-Sustainable-by-Design (SSbD) concept starts at the very earliest stages of the design process – so why not plant the seeds early with the researchers and consumers of the future? 😊  

On 26 September 2025, BNN had a hands-on station at European Researchers’ Night, held as “Life is Science” at Universalmuseum Joanneum in the city center. Organized by BioNanoNet Association member acib, Life in Science was Austria’s only ERN event this year!

Amid a sea of fascinating stations in the lobby of the museum complex, BNN asked visitors to reach inside our “magic box” to see if they can recognize any objects inside simply by feeling and not looking. Children were asked to describe the materials and write their descriptions on our board. Then, after learning the basic concepts of SSbD – thinking of safety and sustainability over the entire life cycle of a material or product – those who were interested wrote down suggestions for improving safety and sustainability of materials to decorate our tree. We were thrilled with the results!  

We then explained to parents and other adults attending about how we use SSbD in projects such as NABIHEAL (showing examples of bandages and other wound-healing materials in our box), PLANETS (using examples of baby spoons with plasticizers as well as materials with flame retardants), SSbD4CheM (using examples of Matchbox cars!). We also talked about ATIMA and InnoMatSyn, our projects in advanced/innovative materials (AdMa) in Austria and Europe, respectively.  

We were thrilled to have roughly 60 people participating in our hands-on activity at an event with 750 visitors!  

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