Research That Makes a Difference

As a university, we have great opportunities to contribute to sustainable social development. One way we do this is by conducting research that makes a real difference.

To succeed, BTH invests in close collaboration with industry and society and in high quality in everything we do. Research is concentrated in areas where it has good potential to benefit society.

BTH has high ambitions - and in some areas, such as software engineering and strategic sustainable development, we are already world-class. Today, just over a third of BTH's activities are research, and we have the ambition to increase that proportion further.

Highly interesting research with strong links to industry

BTH conducts highly interesting research in areas that are of great importance to society.

The research, which is fully in line with BTH's profile, takes place in three different environments where the connection to the business community is strong and collaboration with companies is essential. All research environments have funding from the Knowledge Foundation.

Next generation sustainable products

One research environment focuses on the development of digital methods and tools to develop the next generation of sustainable products in manufacturing industry. The initiative involves developing model-driven support systems to make product development, prototyping and visualization more efficient and value-creating. The research is carried out together with several companies, such as Volvo, Tetra Pak and GKN Aerospace. Read more about the project.

The value of big data

The second research environment focuses on creating resource-efficient systems for analysing large amounts of data. The research is carried out in collaboration with several companies, such as Ericsson, Telenor and Sony Mobile Communications. Read more.

New ways of working for the software industry

The third environment focuses on developing new ways of working and methods so that Swedish companies can develop future software-intensive products and services in a competitive way. The research is conducted in collaboration with Ericsson, Sony, Telia Company, Handelsbanken, Swedbank, MaxKompetens, Time People Group, Tolpagorni Product Management, QTEMA and Fortnox. Read more.

BTH also has a large project funded by the Knowledge Foundation, where the goal is to develop visual and interactive systems with people at the centre. The project is carried out together with WIP, Ericsson, Axis Communications and Tobii Pro.

Podcasts with researchers

Top rankings

Software engineering

• According to the Journal of Systems and Software, research in the field is ranked second in the world and first in Europe in terms of the number of publications in leading journals in the field.
• In the same category, eight BTH researchers are ranked individually in their respective experience groups; experienced, established and early career.
• One researcher is also among those with the highest impact, based on citations, in the category of early career researchers.
• Two BTH researchers are also behind one of the three articles that, according to the Journal of Systems and Software, had the most impact 10 years after publication.
• Senior professor Claes Wohlin has been on the top-15 list of the most published researchers in the world in the field four times in the last six rankings. Claes Wohlin is also at the top of two lists of the authors who have contributed most to the literature in the field of software development. On the lists of the 30 most contributors to the literature in the field in the world, Claes Wohlin is ranked fourth and seventh, respectively.
• According to GPS Scholar (2025), Claes Wohlin ranks 5th and is considered to be among the best (top 0.05%) researchers in the world in software engineering.