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Who’s working on bio-based materials and renewable feedstocks?

Bio-based materials swap petroleum building blocks for ones made from plants, wood and fermentation, and the hard parts are cost, performance at scale, and turning lignin and other leftovers into something worth selling. This page shows how much of that work the Helikon Research Graph holds and gives you a problem statement to run in Partner Search.

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What the Helikon Research Graph holds on bio-based materials and renewable feedstocks

11,000+

researchers

26,000+

publications

1,800+

U.S. patents

Counts from the Helikon Research Graph on 13 October 2026, rounded down. Each figure is counted on its own, so they aren’t added together.

How these were counted
  • Publications: papers whose title, author names or research topics match the keyword set below, the same text the Literature search reads.
  • U.S. patents: granted U.S. patents whose text matches the keyword set and that carry at least one of these CPC subclasses: C08B, C08G, C08H, C08L, C07C, C07D, C12P, D21C. That is the Patents search with the CPC subclass field set.
  • Researchers: people in the graph who authored a matching publication or are named inventors on a matching patent.
  • Keyword set: "bio-based" OR "biobased" OR "renewable feedstock" OR "biorefinery" OR "lignin valorization" OR "lignin-based" OR "lignin depolymerization" OR "lignocellulosic biomass" OR "biomass-derived" OR "bioplastic" OR "polyhydroxyalkanoate" OR "polylactic acid" OR "polylactide" OR "nanocellulose" OR "cellulose nanocrystals" OR "cellulose nanofibers" OR "furandicarboxylic acid" OR "FDCA" OR "polyethylene furanoate" OR "renewable polymer" OR "sustainable polymer" OR "bio-based polymer" OR "platform chemicals"

Try it on a real problem

Partner Search ranks researchers against a problem statement by what their publications, patents and profiles say. This one’s ready to run. Edit it to fit your project.

We want to replace the petroleum-based polyol in a flexible polyurethane foam with one made from lignin or plant oil, without losing compression strength or adding odor. Looking for a group with biomass-derived polyol synthesis and foam testing.
Run this in Partner Search

Who’s working on this

Chemistry, chemical engineering, forest biomaterials and polymer science groups at universities, national laboratory bioenergy and biomass programs, and company teams in chemicals, packaging, agriculture and paper. Much of the feedstock chemistry here also feeds biofuels research.

Universities and research labs

Ranked by researchers with work in this area, researchers whose main topic it is, and the U.S. patents they own.

  1. Michigan State University

    50 researchers · 205 publications · 33 U.S. patents

  2. North Carolina State University

    151 researchers · 252 publications · 2 U.S. patents

  3. National Laboratory of the Rockies

    62 researchers · 229 publications · 16 U.S. patents

  4. Georgia Institute of Technology

    140 researchers · 156 publications

  5. University of Wisconsin–Madison

    124 researchers · 200 publications

  6. University of Minnesota

    84 researchers · 182 publications · 9 U.S. patents

  7. Purdue University West Lafayette

    47 researchers · 112 publications · 20 U.S. patents

  8. Oak Ridge National Laboratory

    68 researchers · 222 publications · 9 U.S. patents

Companies

Ranked by the U.S. patents they own in this area and the researchers who work on it.

  1. Yield10 Bioscience

    6 researchers · 12 publications · 59 U.S. patents

  2. Procter & Gamble

    9 researchers · 16 publications · 21 U.S. patents

  3. Eastman Chemical Company

    5 researchers · 4 publications · 48 U.S. patents

  4. Dow Chemical

    17 researchers · 15 publications · 13 U.S. patents

  5. IBM

    6 researchers · 3 publications · 44 U.S. patents

  6. DuPont

    11 researchers · 7 publications · 28 U.S. patents

  7. 3M

    14 researchers · 4 publications · 13 U.S. patents

  8. Kimberly-Clark

    4 researchers · 1 publication · 16 U.S. patents

Specialists

Organizations where at least a quarter of their researchers work in this area.

  1. Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center

    9 researchers · 79 publications

  2. Novamont · Italy

    11 researchers · 14 publications · 10 U.S. patents

  3. Stora Enso · Finland

    11 researchers · 5 publications · 25 U.S. patents

  4. Wallenberg Wood Science Center · Sweden

    19 researchers · 227 publications

  5. Institute of Polymers, Composites and Biomaterials · Italy

    6 researchers · 77 publications

  6. Materia Nova · Belgium

    5 researchers · 77 publications · 1 U.S. patent

  7. Institute for the Chemistry of OrganoMetallic Compounds · Italy

    8 researchers · 22 publications

From the Helikon Research Graph on 13 October 2026. Researchers are people now at the organization who authored a matching publication or are named inventors on a matching patent. Publications are matching publications that list the organization among their authors’ affiliations at the time of publication, counted once each. Patents are matching U.S. patents the organization owns. Each name opens the organization’s page on Helikon Labs.

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