About us

About us

A bio-based perspective on sustainability

The aim of The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability is to develop new knowledge and technologies to support the transformation from conventional and often non-sustainable industrial production methods to a sustainable bio-based industry.

In this bio-based industry, chemicals and other products are produced using microbial production hosts – cell factories.

The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability has existed for almost a decade and was at its conception the world’s first interdisciplinary research center within sustainability. Our research contributes to developing sustainable products within 3 categories: Sustainable Chemicals, Natural Products and Microbial Food.

By developing and using a range of specialist techniques involving high-quality big data generation and analysis, synthetic biology, machine learning and AI, as well as metabolic modelling and engineering, the Center identifies how to design the next generation of cell factories. We do this with “the end in mind,” meaning that we have a commercial and industrial approach in order to take products to market faster for the benefit of consumers.

The Center also focuses on educating the next generations of young scientists within the cross-field of biotechnology and data science in order to contribute to the Danish biotech-ecosystem with highly skilled scientists and future leaders.