The collaboration between Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and Smart BioMaterials Center (SBMC) is best understood as a deliberately designed division of roles within a single innovation chain. TU/e focuses on fundamental scientific understanding: uncovering how materials behave, how cells interact with those materials, and how new fabrication technologies can be developed. SBMC, in turn, ensures that this knowledge becomes accessible, usable, and actionable for companies, startups, and clinical innovators working on real-world applications.
By embedding academic knowledge, methods, and expertise into concrete customer projects, SBMC enables external partners to benefit directly from the scientific depth of TU/e without needing to replicate an academic research environment themselves.
The work of Iva van der Burgh-Vrees and Tom van Hattem offers a clear illustration of how this model operates in practice.
Fundamental insight as a shared knowledge base (TU/e)
At TU/e, Iva van der Burgh-Vrees contributes to the Holland Hybrid Heart project, where her work centers on electrospinning, cell culture, and cell–material interactions. A key scientific challenge she addresses is how to steer the regenerative capabilities of the human body with the use of electrospun materials.
As part of this research, new techniques to create the electrospun materials are investigated. Then, cell behavior in reaction to these novel materials is studied to gain a fundamental understanding of regeneration in the human body. This fundamental research conducted at TU/e thus focuses on defining what should be measured and how it can be measured meaningfully for biomedical applications.
This type of work is inherently exploratory. It prioritizes understanding over immediate applicability and accepts variability as part of scientific discovery. The outcome is not a product, but a robust body of knowledge, experimental strategies, and validated methodologies.
Translating academic knowledge into customer value (SBMC)
That same expertise takes on a different function at SBMC. Here, the emphasis shifts from exploration to implementation within customer projects. Within these projects, protocols developed at TU/e are translated into standardized, well-documented workflows that customers can rely on. Experimental setups are fixed, variability is controlled, and reproducibility becomes essential. This allows companies and clinical innovators to work with cutting-edge biomaterials and processes while meeting the practical requirements of development timelines, regulatory trajectories, and scalability.
As Van der Burgh-Vrees describes it, the difference is not in the techniques, but in the intent. TU/e asks how does this work? SBMC asks how can a customer use this reliably? In doing so, SBMC effectively opens the university’s knowledge base to industry, lowering the barrier between academic discovery and applied innovation.
Biofabrication knowledge made accessible through collaboration
A similar dynamic is visible in the work of PhD candidate Tom van Hattem, who conducts his research within the group of Miguel Dias Castilho. His work focuses on advanced 3D-printing technologies for regenerative medicine, including light-based and volumetric printing approaches capable of producing increasingly complex tissue models.
At TU/e, the primary objective is to push technological boundaries: integrating multiple cell types, engineering the cell microenvironment with controlled mechanical properties , and incorporating functional features such as perfusion into tissue models. Together, these efforts expand what is scientifically and technologically possible and enable next generation of in vitro tissue models.
Through SBMC, this emerging knowledge becomes relevant for customer-driven development. Questions of reproducibility, robustness, and process control are addressed in a way that allows external partners to engage with these advanced fabrication techniques. Instead of remaining confined to an academic setting, biofabrication expertise is embedded into collaborative projects where it can inform real development decisions.
In this sense, SBMC acts as a conduit: customers gain access not only to facilities, but to the accumulated scientific insight of TU/e researchers, translated into a form that supports applied innovation.
One ecosystem, two responsibilities
Crucially, this close relationship does not blur responsibilities. TU/e remains responsible for fundamental research and long-term scientific exploration. SBMC ensures that the value created at TU/e does not stop at publication, but can flow outward to companies, startups, and healthcare innovators.
By working with SBMC, customers effectively tap into the TU/e knowledge ecosystem, supported by professionals who understand both the science and the requirements of applied development.
From fundamental insight to patient impact
The collaboration between TU/e and SBMC demonstrates how an innovation ecosystem can function as a coherent whole. Fundamental research generates understanding. SBMC translates that understanding into structured, reproducible approaches within customer projects. External partners, in turn, can build on this foundation to bring new biomaterial solutions closer to the clinic and the market.
In this chain, researchers like Iva van der Burgh-Vrees and Tom van Hattem are not just contributors to science, but enablers of knowledge transfer. Their work shows how deep academic expertise can become accessible, actionable, and impactful when fundamental and translational roles are clearly defined and tightly connected.
