MNEXT > Nieuws > No Ocean Too Vast

21 January 2025

No Ocean Too Vast

This year, Living Lab Biobased Brazil (LLB) celebrates its 10th anniversary. What began as an initiative to strengthen our labor market has evolved into a successful platform for biobased innovation and collaboration. LLB facilitates international cooperation and knowledge exchange in research projects contributing to the materials and energy transition. Recently, even the first PhD researcher successfully crossed the ocean.

In 2014, the Living Lab Biobased Brazil was established under the leadership of MNEXT. Today, there are seven partner universities in Brazil – UFMG, UFSJ, UFOP, UFV, PUC Minas, UFJF, and UFLA – and five knowledge institutions in the Netherlands – Avans, HZ, NHL Stenden, Zuyd University of Applied Sciences, and Maastricht University – participating in the network. The original goal was to strengthen international collaboration between the Netherlands and Brazil in education and research through partnerships between knowledge institutions, governments, and companies.

Jappe de Best, Professor of Biobased Resources & Energy at MNEXT and involved in the founding of LLB: “We quickly identified common themes around biobased innovations. This led to the first steps toward joint projects.” Immediately after the establishment of LLB, the first students traveled to a new continent. Since then, more than 260 students have completed internships in either the Netherlands or Brazil, and several joint research projects have been conducted.

Last year, a new milestone was reached: the first PhD candidate to undertake her multi-year research trajectory at the Federal University of Viçosa (UFV), with one year also spent at MNEXT. Bruna Rodrigues completed her PhD on the topic ‘Sustainable Solutions for Pulp Mill Sludge Management’, supervised in Brazil by Claudio Silva, Professor at UFV’s Forest Engineering Department (DEF), and in the Netherlands by Jappe de Best, Alexander Compeer, and Qian Zhou.

A Broadened Horizon

The collaboration within LLB provides valuable experiences and perspectives for all involved. Twan Lemlijn, a Mechanical Engineering student at Zuyd University of Applied Sciences, is currently completing his research internship at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG). For him, the program represents not only an academic challenge but also an opportunity to experience a completely different culture and environment.

“This experience has made me more independent. I now live in a city of 2.5 million people, completely different from my small village in the south of the Netherlands. Here, you can directly feel the impacts of climate change. Every year, new heat records are broken, and droughts and wildfires have a significant impact. This especially drives the youth here to realize that they must act for the environment. That awareness is growing quickly.”

Ana Binow Bitar came to the Netherlands during her studies through LLB. She used this as a springboard to build a career in the Netherlands. Her story illustrates how LLB not only crosses borders but also retains knowledge and talent for the Netherlands. After her internship, Ana had the opportunity to stay in the Netherlands, pursue a master’s degree, and eventually work at Deerns, a renowned engineering firm that provides integrated solutions with expertise in areas such as building physics. At Deerns, she works on projects focused on wind analysis, ventilation, energy efficiency, acoustics, fire safety, and daylight design.

She observes significant differences in the perspectives of the construction sectors in both countries: “Sustainable building is not strictly regulated in Brazil, and although the field of building physics is developing there, it’s not as advanced as in the Netherlands. In Brazil, the focus is more on cost-effective structural solutions. Here, environmental regulations are very strict, and there is much more emphasis on energy efficiency and building comfort.”

Knowledge Exchange as a Vehicle for Innovation

The collaboration between Brazil and the Netherlands within Living Lab Biobased Brazil has resulted in various research projects and valuable knowledge exchange. Claudio Silva emphasizes the importance of this exchange: “The exchange of knowledge is very important. It’s not just about students learning from us, but also about students bringing new ideas and problem-solving methods from the Netherlands to us.”

Claudio highlights the contributions of students such as Martijn Eikelboom, who was the lead author of the article ‘A multi-criteria decision analysis of management alternatives for anaerobically digested kraft pulp mill sludge’, published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE. This article provided new insights into a significant issue for the pulp and paper industry, which is of great importance to Brazil.

Jappe de Best agrees: “The strength of LLB lies in the diverse backgrounds of students and researchers, who approach problems from different perspectives and thus enhance the quality of research.”

Looking to the Future

The ten-year collaboration between the Netherlands and Brazil through LLB has been a success, but according to Jappe de Best, the horizon is far from reached. “We have laid a solid foundation, but the world is changing rapidly, and there are still many opportunities for the future. The focus will increasingly be on strengthening research ties, further developing PhD exchanges, and creating new collaborative projects that address the major global challenges in the materials and energy transition.”

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