Wallenberg Initiative Materials Science for Sustainability

“Our society is increasingly dependent on technology. Take smartphones, for example: our entire lives are stored in them. Yet most of us are unaware of how energy-intensive their production processes are, how toxic or scarce some of the materials used in these devices can be, or how poorly many technologies are designed for recycling”, says WISE Guest Professor Federico Rosei at LTU.

The Wallenberg Initiative Materials Science for Sustainability (WISE) seeks a Director of Sustainability to lead and develop the initiative’s strategic sustainability efforts.

“I think it is important to observe and learn from nature. Nature does not waste. What one organism discards, another uses as energy. The key question for us is how we can minimize and reuse our own waste, how we can create more with less”, says WISE Guest Professor Alexander Bismarck from University of Vienna.

We’re thrilled to kick off the WACQT-WISE Pilot Call 2025 with an inspiring webinar.

—Quantum phenomena and materials science have once again demonstrated unique phenomena with the potential to benefit society, says Professor Olle Eriksson at Uppsala University, WISE Co-Director and Chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics.

In a world increasingly powered by lithium-ion batteries—from smartphones to electric vehicles—the race is on to find cleaner, smarter ways to recover this critical metal.

Photo taken by Retain.

On 2 October 2025, Chalmers University of Technology officially inaugurated its new additive manufacturing infrastructure: AM@Chalmers and the Chalmers WISE Additive node.

The Wallenberg Centre for Quantum Technology (WACQT) and the Wallenberg Initiative Materials Science for Sustainability (WISE) are launching a new call to spark collaboration at the cutting edge of research.

—Imagine a world where vehicles, buildings, and even everyday devices become self-powering, seamlessly merging structure and storage. This is the vision of structural power composites. Structural power composites open the door to a future where every part of a product contributes not only to its form and strength, but also to its function as an energy source, says WISE Guest Professor Madhavi Srinivasan from Nanyang Technological University.

-Our role is to act as a bridge between PhD students, postdocs, and WISE Research School management. We receive questions and concerns both from students and postdocs as well as from the RS management, which we bring to our meetings for discussion, says Yamini Portes, chairperson of the WISE Student Council and PhD student at Stockholm University.