Joost Brancart

Prof. Dr. Ir. Joost Brancart combines an appointment as assistant research professor at the Faculty of Engineering of Vrije Universiteit Brussel with a part-time appointment as innovation manager for the Sustainable Materials Technologies (SuMaT#) Industrial Research Fund of the Sustainable Materials Engineering (SUME) research group. 

Joost's research focuses on advanced characterization of polymeric materials and composites and unravelling their structure-processing-property relations for the design of smart, functional materials in view of a wide range of applications. He specializes in reversible network polymerization that can be used to create stimuli-responsive materials, self-healing polymers and to improve the overall sustainability of polymer networks and composites. His research topics include thermally and photochemically reversible polymer networks, additive manufacturing, and the evaluation and validation of new material technologies in applications, such as soft robotics, flexible and stretchable electronics and automotive applications. 

He obtained his PhD in Engineering Sciences in 2017 at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He received the Solvay Award for both his master thesis and doctoral thesis, laying the groundworks of the research in self-heaing polymers based on the thermally reversible Diels-Alder cycloaddition reaction that is still continued today. He was awarded both Junior and Senior postdoctoral fellowships from the Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (FWO) that addressed two major challenges in self-healing materials. The Junior fellowship focused on maintaining excellent self-healing, while adding functions such as electrical conductivity and magnetic properties, and the Senior fellowship provided additional degrees of freedom to tune the dynamic nature of reversible polymer networks, irrespective of their network topology and mechanical behaviour. This research led to the co-application and co-coordination of 3 EU-funded projects and the founding of spinoff company Valence Technologies, for which he acts as Scientific Advisor.