Bioceramics 32, the 32nd Symposium and Annual Meeting of the International Society for Ceramics in Medicine (ISCM), took place from 20-23 September 2022 in Mestre (Venice, Italy). The conference, hosting material scientists, industrial and clinicians from all over the world, offered a unique opportunity to participate in a highly trans-disciplinary event covering the development and application of ceramic-based systems.

Within the framework of this conference, the NMBP-15 EU project ASINA organised its 1st Stakeholder Workshop focused on “Safe-and-Sustainable-by-Design (SSbD) paradigms applied to (nano)materials”. The workshop aimed to provide an overview on the different S(S)bD tools currently developed in several EU projects, as well as identifying their specific key features and applications. It was chaired by the ASINA coordinator, Anna Costa (CNR-ISTEC) and included the participation of Europe’s top nanosafety and Safe-by-Design (SbD) experts, representing different ongoing European projects.

The EC funded NMBP-15 and -16 projects are expected to deliver integrated approaches for the implementation of Safe-and-Sustainable-by-Design nanotechnologies, through relevant case studies, by developing e-infrastructures that support and facilitate decision making when having to weight different criteria: technological and regulatory requirements, health and environmental impacts, as well as economic analysis, along the life-cycle of a nanomaterial, in its complex form and once integrated in nano-enabled products. In this workshop, all NMBP-15 and -16 projects presented their S(S)bD approach, their tools under development as well as their specific industrial case studies. Next to that, latest developments on sustainable nano-fabrication and planned activities to set-up an international SSbD infrastructure were presented. The regulatory perspective was covered by a talk from JRC and OECD, highlighting among others a newly developed early warning system for advanced materials.

Susanne Resch (BNN) presented DIAGONAL and the key features of its SSbD Decision Support System that will be developed within the upcoming years. The audience was mainly interested in how social and economic sustainability aspects are also addressed in the project, to get an idea of how holistic the DIAGONAL approach can be considered.

The workshop was a great opportunity to discuss latest developments in S(S)bD among experts and identify next steps and activities to maximise synergies between the projects. A roundtable discussion facilitated to exchange different views around life cycle dimensions and data management strategies.

As an outcome of this workshop, an overview table with all NMBP-15 and -16 S(S)bD tools was created, emphasising their “by design” component, assessment part, main inputs and outputs of the tools, as well as their key strengths. This table will be refined in the upcoming months by the EU NanoSafety Cluster WG E on “Innovation and Safe(r)-by-Design”.