Dr. ir. Karolien Vanbroekhoven is research manager in VITO in the field of sustainable chemistry. Her focus areas of R&D are biobased economy & sustainable process development. Within the program of sustainable chemistry, she develops R&D programs for the core area’s of VITO, i.e., new value chains from renewable feedstock and sustainable industrial process transformation. Mainly active in strategy development and implementation, a.o. technology development, building strategic collaborations, technology watch. The last 10 years she mainly managed technologies in electrochemistry and bioprocesses and an international group of researchers working in these fields. Initially she managed a projectportfolio in environmental biotechnology for 7 years after obtaining her PhD in applied biotechnology. Currently, she is responsible for the lignin program in Biorizon, a shared research centre aiming at industrial success of bioaromatics by 2025.  Meanwhile she acts as working group leader in the European Lignocost action to coordinate the development of applications derived from lignin. She is a core member of the Moonshot core team in Biobased developments.