Prof. Dr. Ir. Joost Brancart holds a 10% assistant research professor position at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and a postdoctoral fellowship from the Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (FWO). He is affiliated to the Physical Chemistry and Polymer Science (FYSC) laboratory of the Sustainable Materials Engineering (SUME) research group. He focuses on unravelling the structure-property relations of polymeric materials and exploits these relations to design smart, functional materials for challenging applications. He specializes in reversible network polymerization that can be used to create stimuli-responsive materials and to improve the overall sustainability of polymer networks. His research topics include thermally and photochemically reversible polymer networks, additive manufacturing, evaluation and validation of new material technologies in applications such as soft robotics, flexible electronics and other applications. This research led to the co-application and co-coordination of 3 EU-funded projects. Currently, he is leading a subgroup of over 15 PhD material scientists and mechanical engineers working on topics related to self-healing soft robotics.