New National Centres of Competence led by NRP 66 researchers

Two of the eight newly awarded National Centres of Competence in Research (NCCRs) will be conducted under the leadership of researchers involved in NRP 66: Christoph Weder from the University of Fribourg will be in charge of the NCCR "Center for Bio-Inspired Stimuli-Responsive Materials", while Matthias Daniel Kohler from ETH Zurich leads the NCCR "Digital Fabrication - Advanced Building Processes in Architecture".

The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) is starting eight new National Centres of Competence in Research (NCCRs) in 2014, two of them under the leadership of professors and institutes already involved in NRP 66. The NCCR "Digital Fabrication" aims to bring together researchers and institutions from architecture, robotics, computer and materials science in order to establish digital fabrication as a significant segment of the future construction industry. In the context of NRP 66, Matthias Daniel Kohler's team at the Institute of Technology and Architecture at ETHZ is already working on the robot-assisted composition of complex wooden support structures. The NCCR "Center for Bio-Inspired Stimuli-Responsive Materials" aims to combine different disciplines in order to create applications for new intelligent materials inspired by nature. Christoph Weder from the Adolphe Merkle Institute is participating in NRP 66 with a research project investigating the development of new procedures for producing cellulose nanocomposites.