Catalysing the green transition The Novo Nordisk Foundation Biotechnology Research Institute for the Green Transition.
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Catalysing the green transition With the world facing unprecedented environmental challenges, it is imperative to develop real-world solutions for more sustainable living.
At BRIGHT — the Novo Nordisk Foundation Biotechnology Research Institute for the Green Transition — we focus on research-based, innovative, and transformative biotechnology solutions to catalyse the green transition. Uniting researchers, educators and industry, BRIGHT serves as a science innovation hub for developing efficient biomanufacturing technologies designed to accelerate the bioeconomy.
Our vision
Our mission
Biotechnology has the potential to provide innovative, transformative and scalable biosolutions to planetary boundary challenges.
To be the global leader in developing research-based, innovative, transformative biotechnology solutions to catalyse the green transition of society. NNF24SA0100980
Groundbreaking biotech research is at our core. But we do more than develop cutting-edge technology. We bridge research and industry — from bold ideas in the lab to real-world implementation in industry. We believe that biosolutions are not just scientific breakthroughs but pathways to a sustainable and economically viable future — for businesses, for society, and for generations to come.
BRIGHT is generously supported by the Novo Nordisk Foundation with a DKK 1.05 billion grant over seven years.
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Our strategic goals “At BRIGHT we work across the entire value chain — from bold ideas in the lab to real-world implementation in industry — to create competitive and sustainable alternatives to fossil-based products and processes.” Luuk Van der Wielen, Executive Centre Director at BRIGHT
At BRIGHT we operate with specific strategic goals that form the backbone of our work and reflect our long-term aspirations.
Scientific and technical excellence Position BRIGHT as a global leader for translational, mission-driven biosolutions, where disruptive ideas move seamlessly from fundamentals, academic discovery and laboratory to industrial and societal adoption, supported by AI and automation.
A creative and interdisciplinary research environment Establish a professional, robust and effective organization that fosters collaboration across DTU, industry, academic and societal partners with a diversified, long-lasting funding base.
A world-class talent ecosystem Establish BRIGHT as an attractive institution for future biotech leaders to learn, work and grow – combining outstanding postgraduate training, the mentoring of future leaders across career levels, encouraging cross-sector mobility (academia–industry exchanges), and fostering a strong culture of entrepreneurship and innovation.
Shape policy and public understanding Be a reliable, credible and visible player, as well as the trusted source for expert input on biosolutions that further societal needs. Anchor BRIGHT in the green transition Ensure BRIGHT plays a leading role in in the green transition through leadership and international partnerships.
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From discovery to impact To solve the complex challenges facing the world today, it is not enough to rely solely on traditional forms of scientific research and teaching. While typical discovery-oriented research is vital, an interdisciplinary approach is increasingly seen as a viable framework in which to better solve societal problems. At BRIGHT, we apply a mission-driven model. This aligns research and learning across disciplines with collaboration from a diverse range of stakeholders — from government and policymakers to industries and leaders, to communities and non-profits – while maintaining the scientific rigour and excellence of traditional academic research. By fostering cross-disciplinary collaboration and partnerships with multiple sectors, this approach makes us better placed to solve specific and measurable societal challenges.
Our missions BRIGHT has launched three broad missions that we believe will generate real impact and that reinforce our commitment to the green transition.
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Sustainable materials
Sustainable materials
Mission 1A: A sustainable alternative to PFAS products
Mission 1B: Bio-based commodity chemicals
PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are used in a vast array of consumer and industrial products because they are highly durable, resistant to heat and chemicals, and difficult to replace. However, these same properties also make them incredibly persistent in the environment, and their widespread use has created an urgent need for safer, high-performance alternatives. Mission 1A aims to address this challenge by developing a new generation of PFASfree energy materials through biomanufacturing. Rather than relying on fossil-derived chemistry, the mission will use biology to produce proteinbased materials with a defined composition, structure, and function.
The central idea is to turn proteins into programmable materials. Using microbial engineering, protein design, and advanced material testing, the mission will build a pipeline that can design, produce, assemble, and evaluate new materials in a reproducible way. These materials can be tailored for properties such as stability, adhesion, durability, ion transport, surface protection, and controlled degradation. Because they require materials that perform under strict chemical, mechanical, and electrochemical conditions, batteries will serve as the first demanding test case, PFAS
are currently used in several battery-related components, including binders, separators, coatings, and electrolyte-related materials. Proving that proteinbased materials can work in this setting would provide a strong proof-of-concept for broader PFAS replacement. The ambition, however, goes beyond batteries. Mission 1A will establish a scalable platform for biomanufacturing advanced PFAS — free materials that could later support applications across energy technologies, industrial coatings, electronics, and other sectors where safe, sustainable, high-performance materials are urgently needed.
Replacing fossil-based chemical production in the industrial sector with climate-friendly bioprocesses is vital if we are to succeed with the green transition. This mission aims to convert sustainable CO2-derived feedstocks into essential chemicals, replacing petrochemical production routes with bioprocesses while strengthening Europe’s access to critical resources. By creating robust microbial cell factories that produce drop-in bulk chemicals through biocatalytic and chemical catalytic approaches, the mission will create scalable bioprocesses that can be easily deployed on sites across the world.
The production of chemicals used in organic chemistry, including polymers and solvents, is currently dominated by mature fossil-based petrochemical routes that have benefited from decades of optimization. These processes rely on large, fully depreciated assets, integrated refinery and petrochemical infrastructure, high feedstock concentration, and efficient product recovery systems. Consequently, Mission 1B is not focused solely on replacing fossil-derived carbon with CO2 as a feedstock but also examines the entire production process to address the key technical barriers
limiting biological manufacturing. This includes product titre and rates, yield, tolerance to low-cost feedstocks, downstream recovery, process robustness, and scale-up predictability. In its initial phase, the mission will combine feedstock and product mapping to provide a metabolic atlas of promising targets, including those that increase the EU’s resource base and secure access to a range of key chemicals.
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Microbial foods
Net-zero agriculture
Mission 2: Sustainable and tasty food
Mission 3B: Harnessing the power of microbes
Not only do microbial foods have the potential to become central to a more sustainable food system, they can also be tasty, healthy and affordable. By building an AI-powered framework based on open data, analytical and predictive models and infrastructure for the rational design of microbial foods, Mission 2 aims to design sustainable food that people genuinely want to eat.
In its initial phase, the mission will undertake an extensive characterization of five hundred microbial foods, develop predictive models of consumer acceptance alongside sustainability and health assessment models, establish advanced fermentation, and generate the first human clinical data on the safety and health impacts of microbial foods. Ultimately, Mission 2 will contribute to building a 300 Mt global microbial food industry through a rational microbial food innovation framework supported by AI-powered predictive models that meet four criteria — consumer acceptance, health, sustainability and scalability.
Agriculture is facing a crisis. By 2050 agriculture needs to produce 50 % more food for 9.7 billion people, and as the effects of pests and climate change increase, so too do CO2 emissions. While chemical solutions such as synthetic pesticides used to combat crop losses are reliable, cheap and scalable, they are also hazardous and promote resistance. Mission 3B aims to harness microorganisms to protect crops, reduce losses and cut CO2 emissions while strengthening global food security.
It will deploy improved microbial-based crop protection strategies that aim to reduce global crop losses by 1% (16 million tons annually) and avoid 22.24 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions annually. The initial phases of the mission will focus on Brazil, the largest market for biosolutions and where widespread acceptance of these solutions provide a basis for large-scale, low-cost opportunities in sectors such as sugar cane and soy. The mission then aims to extend this pilot globally.
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The foundation of our success
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One stop shop from idea to production
Streamlining laboratory processes to enhance throughput and reproducibility.
Designing and assembling complex genetic constructs and microbial cell factories with high precision.
Automation
Engineering microbes that consume single-carbon (C1) gases through a nextgeneration C1 biofoundry.
DNA Foundry C1 MAP Adaptive Laboratory Evolution
Utilizing AI and data science to optimize biological design and interpret biological data.
Informatics Platform
Computational Design & Analytics
Supporting data-driven project execution. R&D Kitchen
Reconstruction
The BRIGHT Biofoundry comprises specialized teams contributing unique expertise to the research pipeline. To successfully enable our missions, it is imperative to integrate multiple technologies and infrastructure within areas such as data science, informatics, cell factories, and fermentation. The BRIGHT Biofoundry is a dynamic, technologydriven hub that integrates automation, AI-driven computational design, high-precision DNA assembly, adaptive laboratory evolution, advanced analytics, carbon gas (C1) conversion, and FAIR-compliant data management.
Spanning the full innovation pipeline, the Biofoundry is designed to systematically close any technology gaps, particularly in strain development throughput, multi-omics integration, and AI-guided design-buildtest-learn cycles - ensuring that every mission project benefits from the most advanced biological engineering infrastructure available.
Systematically modelling and simulating biological networks using pan omics analysis.
Engineering microbial traits through evolutionary strategies.
Rapid prototyping and experimental development of novel food systems.
Pre-Pilot Plant Analytics
Providing high-resolution, quantitative analysis of biological samples.
Bridging laboratory and industrial-scale production for process validation.
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The go-to for AI-driven biotechnology
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To translate this strategy into reality, the Institute will launch and manage four core initiatives:
Our core ambition is to lead the green transition by integrating biotechnology with advanced computational science.
For BRIGHT, AI (Artificial Intelligence) is not simply a supporting tool, but a foundational and critical technology that allows us to fundamentally utilise our biological capabilities across the entire organisation to the fullest. By building an open-access digital infrastructure, creating tailored machine learning models, and forging robust public-private ecosystems that accelerate the journey from lab discovery to industrial spin-off, we aim to establish BRIGHT as the reference point for AI-driven biotechnology, data standardization, and open science.
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A Biotech AI modelling suite We will design and train domain-specific AI models optimized for biotechnology. This includes predictive models for microbial foods and metabolic engineering, machine learning workflows for de novo protein design, and predictive algorithms for microbiome behaviours to optimize agriculture.
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An open-data platform BRIGHT will provide an open data platform footprint for other departments containing standardised, heterogeneous biotech datasets as well as structured databases. This platform will serve as the technical engine for data sharing across DTU departments and external partners.
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Data standardisation frameworks We will spearhead the definition and implementation of data standards (ontologies, terminologies, formats). This initiative will create standardized metadata schemas for synthetic biology, microbial industrial and food fermentation processes, and the complex microbiome-plant networks that underpin highly efficient net-zero agriculture ensuring that data generated by academia is readable and usable by industrial AI pipelines.
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An open-biotech software Initiative To foster global collaboration, tools, algorithms, and software pipelines developed within BRIGHT’s AI research will be hosted on public repositories under open-source licenses.
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The power of partnerships
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Uniting researchers, educators and industry to develop and realise the missions requires close collaboration and partnerships – both within DTU and externally. The breadth of mission objectives requires diverse skillsets and perspectives, and BRIGHT is uniquely placed to utilise the full potential and expertise of DTU, with access to critical bio-based and contextual capabilities, as well as experimental and digital infrastructure. It is also embedded within a framework of open science and infrastructure sharing, collaborating with other DTU research infrastructures to maximise synergies across Denmark’s biotechnology landscape, and ensuring that platform resources and data are harnessed across the university. Beyond DTU, BRIGHT focuses on deepening and expanding strategic collaborations through our European networks and further ahead, by building key enabling partnerships in both Latin America and Asia. This includes ambitious public-private partnerships and networks between leading researchers, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), industrial collaborators, and premier research and policy organisations. BRIGHT will work with leading research facilities and universities across the world and attract innovative academic researchers by offering an open, collaborative environment.
DTU collaboration • Bioprocess modelling and digital twinning to guide bioprocess development (DTU Chemical Engineering) • Protein chemistry, fungal biotechnology, and microbial ecology (DTU Bioengineering and DTU Chemistry) • Microbial food fermentation, food processing and nutrition (DTU Food) • Energy materials (DTU Energy) • Data science (DTU Compute) • Sustainable innovation (DTU Sustain, Center for Absolute Sustainability, DTU Entrepreneurship, DTU Skylab)
“BRIGHT is expected to help secure and expand DTU’s and Europe’s leading positions in sustainable technology and economic development especially through biotechnology for advanced and circular materials, low carbon and affordable microbial food technology as well as net zero agro-industrial value chains. BRIGHT is ideally positioned to partner across our strong disciplines at DTU and with our academic and industrial partners in Europe and worldwide — for the benefit of society.”
Anders Overgaard Bjarklev, DTU President
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From knowledge to business To truly deliver meaningful impact beyond the missions, we engage with researchers, industry, policymakers, and society to accelerate the adoption of biosolutions. We attract leading talent, nurture world-class researchers, and develop the next generation of scientists and industry professionals. We maximize societal impact by identifying barriers to adoption, engaging stakeholders, and working with policymakers to accelerate deployment. And our mission-driven research model combines scientific excellence with early product-development insights to ensure commercial relevance from the outset. Public–private partnerships BRIGHT’s public–private partnership model creates a staged innovation pipeline that brings together academia, established industry, and startups to accelerate technologies - from discovery to deployment. With industrial partners in food, chemicals, fuels, and agriculture BRIGHT collaborates through structured innovation platforms, while also supporting startups to translate research into new ventures. Together, these pathways advance technologies from proof of concept through validation and demonstration to large-scale deployment — supported by close industry co-creation and a strong entrepreneurial ecosystem. Innovation pipeline BRIGHT’s innovation funnel channels projects all the way through idea generation to commercialization. Stage-gate methodology is the primary project management framework, using carbon intensity (economic value per unit greenhouse gas emission) as a central performance metric.
“The world needs excellent science and innovative engineering for urgent and rapid societal transition toward greener and more resilient futures. I expect BRIGHT to grow to an internationally recognised broad-based biosolutions and biomanufacturing institute with a strong ‘can do’ mentality. Given the breadth of its expertise in fundamental and translational biotechnology, bioprocess and bioproduct research, worldclass infrastructure, and excellent European and global networks, such an institute will have significant impact on the sustainable transition.”
Tuula Teeri, Chair of BRIGHT Supervisory Board
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Leading the green transition At BRIGHT, sustainability does not just drive our innovations and partnerships, it shapes our research agenda and underpins everything we do through three important elements: profit, people, and planet.
Sustainability in our research At BRIGHT, we take a value chain approach across biotechnology, green transition, and low-carbon technologies. We focus on scaling high-quality circular and biogenic carbon solutions while balancing economic value, carbon impact, and resource independence. The Sustainable Innovation Office ensures that all BRIGHT projects are assessed for environmental, social, and economic sustainability — from idea to proof of concept and beyond. Working closely with researchers throughout the innovation process, the office supports projects with life cycle assessments (LCA) to measure sustainability and techno-economic assessments (TEA) to evaluate economic viability.
Profit
People
Planet
Sustainable profit is a model where biosolutions are developed with both economic viability and societal impact in mind. This means creating solutions that are not only profitable but also accessible to all, regardless of wealth, without affecting the planet.
People working at BRIGHT are committed to creating a supportive, inclusive, and lasting work environment. A sustainable workplace promotes psychological safety, transparent decisionmaking, and equal appreciation of all employees, regardless of their role or contribution.
A sustainable planet is a shared responsibility. This means integrating the responsible use of resources into everyday practices by reducing energy use, waste, travel, unnecessary AI use, and hazardous materials.
This requires evaluating innovation based on its full lifecycle impact — from raw materials and production to use and endof-life outcomes. It should help the transition from extractive, industrial production systems toward circular and regenerative practices.
It also recognises that scientific excellence depends on maintaining a healthy environment and therefore supports work-life balance, continuous learning, ethical reflection, and collaboration rather than burnout, unhealthy competition, or exploitative leadership.
It also means prioritising lowcarbon purchases, shared infrastructure, and collaboration across DTU to make better use of collective resources, including waste management, purchasing agreements, and sustainability assessments for projects.
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Promoting BRIGHT as the frontrunner in biosolutions is vital to our success.
Putting BRIGHT on the map
We aim to create awareness about the potential of biosolutions in various sectors, and we work actively with the media to promote BRIGHT’s research results, engage in thought-leadership and encourage the involvement of our researchers in public debate. We also invest in educating civic society about the benefits of biosolutions and being a decisive voice for policy change that enables greater adoption. Our MicrobeXplorer website for instance, introduces high school students to the world of microbes while reinforcing the role biosolutions play in driving the circular economy and contributing to a resilient world. Through our partnership with DI Biosolutions, we are active in policy efforts in Denmark and the EU that highlight the role of biosolutions in sustainability and food security and aim to improve Danish and European regulatory conditions for biosolutions. We also co-host events for scientists, industry, and families to experience science in fun and interactive ways illustrating what biosolutions can do and how they are a part of our everyday lives.
“Enabling the development of scalable biomanufacturing is key when addressing urgent, global challenges such as climate change, food shortage, and replacement of fossil fuels. We are proud to support BRIGHT as part of the solution to unlock the potential of biology and turning scientific promise into real-world impact.”
Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen, CEO, Novo Nordisk Foundation
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The talent of the future A biosolutions-based economy calls for a new generation of engineers and researchers that can harness the potential of biotechnology. BRIGHT leverages DTU’s leading education programmes in collaborating departments such DTU Chemical Engineering, DTU Bioengineering, and DTU Food to provide students with real-life challenges from industry and research. BRIGHT also collaborates with key international partners including TU Delft, Wageningen University & Research, University of Campinas, São Paulo State University, Imperial College London, and University of Queensland in selected programmes to advance education of future talent in biotechnology.
Top early-career researchers will be attracted through multiple channels, including joint academic partnership applications. BRIGHT’s PhD training will integrate innovation, entrepreneurship, data management, data science, and AI literacy. BRIGHT will also expand lifelong learning through courses for industry professionals and open online sustainability assessment tutorials co-developed by the Sustainable Innovation Office and other DTU departments.
“BRIGHT is building on the legacy of DTU Biosustain in both scientific excellence and entrepreneurship and will accelerate to scale concrete biosolutions to benefit societyand strengthen European competitiveness and resilience. Key mechanisms are DTU spinouts as well as participating in and leading strong international public-private innovation partnerships - and BRIGHT has so far made great starts in both.”
Christine Nellemann, DTU Provost
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BRIGHT Technical University of Denmark Søltofts Plads 220 2800 Kgs. Lyngby Denmark bright.dtu.dk