Core Members of the Sustainable Future Network

Prof. Dr. Christine Alewell

Professor of Environmental Geosciences. Research and teaching in element budgets of ecosystems, sustainable use of soils and soil degradation, isotope geochemistry and biomarkers as indicators of soil stability.

Prof. Dr. Manfred Max Bergman

Prof. Manfred Max Bergman is Chair of Social Research and Methodology at the University of Basel, Research Councilor of the Swiss National Science Foundation, and member of the Uganda National Academy of Sciences and the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), a global initiative for the United Nations. He is President of the Swiss Academic Society for Environmental Research and Ecology, Section Editor in Chief of Sustainability and Editor in Chief of World. Since2014 he is the Chairman of the World Sustainability Forum and the Basel Sustainability Forum. His research deals with sustainability and the correlation between economics and society in India and China.

Prof. Dr. C. Miguel Brendl

Professor of marketing with research in both marketing (consumer behavior) and psychology, mostly experimental. Works on understanding how people evaluate their decision options when making decisions, what motivational incentives are, and how to influence decisions and motivation.

Prof. Dr. Edwin Constable

Professor of Chemistry. President Euresearch, former Vice Rector of the University of Basel. Research foci are the design and development of materials from coordination or supramolecular compounds that will help humanity achieve the 17 SDGs. Keyword: "Sustainable Materials Chemistry." The spectrum of compounds of interest ranges from simple coordination compounds that can absorb or emit light to coordination networks that can bind small molecules or behave as active millimetric materials.

Prof. Dr. Ruth Delzeit

Professor of Global and Regional Land Use Change. Her research focuses on the economic analysis of land use change, bioenergy and water use. The aim of her research is to understand interrelated processes of global change and their impact on the scarce resource land as well as possible trade-offs in the use of biomass. In doing so, she works in a transdisciplinary manner with partners from science, policy and practice.

Prof. Dr. Jens Gaab

Professor of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy. The team of Jens Gaab investigates the psychological conditions for changes in behavior and experience. Previous approaches include the effects of psychotherapeutic interventions as well as deceptive and open label placebos on various objective and subjective markers. Jens Gaab is currently conducting studies on the conditions of behavioral change that are generally resource-conserving but associated with reductions in pleasant individual behaviors.

Prof. Dr. Ulf Hahnel

Professor for Psychology of Sustainability and Behavior Change. Prof. Hahnel investigates human judgment and decision making and the underlying psychological mechanisms in the context of global climate change and the energy transition. His research moreover aims to develop evidence-based behavioral interventions to promote more sustainable decisions. In his Eccellenza project, awarded by the SNSF, Ulf Hahnel is leading an international team of experts that examines sustainable judgment and decisions in 12 nations across the world and across time. To transfer findings from the level of individual decisions to the system level, he develops interdisciplinary methodology to integrate experimental decision data into energy system and climate models.

Prof. Dr. Beat Hintermann

Professor of Public Finance. Research interests are in the field of empirical environmental economics, particularly the evidence-based evaluation of policy measures in the areas climate policy and mobility.

Prof. Dr. Patricia Holm

Professor of Ecology and head of the Man-Society-Environment program, representative of the Phil.-Nat. faculty in the MSD. Research interests include changes in aquatic ecosystems due to anthropogenic impacts; focuses on research on loss of biodiversity, invasive species, and impacts of human activities on whales and dolphins, as well as on the occurrence and effects of microplastics in aquatic systems.

Prof. Dr. Sabine Huebner

Professor of Ancient History. Her research and teaching deal with the impact of climate change and pandemics on ancient societies and leads the interdisciplinary 'Basel Climate Science & Ancient History Lab', which was founded in 2018. Focus is placed on the reconstruction of climate variation and climate change in antiquity, social and economic impacts of climate change and pandemics in ancient societies, religious change, everyday life of lower social classes, interdisciplinary collaborations with paleoclimatology and digital humanities.

Prof. Dr. Aya Kachi

Associate Professor of International Political Economy and Energy Policy. Research foci are statistical methodology, as well as international political economy and public opinion research. Current research in energy and climate policy sheds light on policy feasibility by examining the role of different actors, such as interest groups, voters, and policymakers, in more detail.

Prof. Dr. Jens Köhrsen

Professor of Religion and Economics. His research focuses on urban energy transition processes as well as sustainable development and religion. He bridges the gap between religion-and sustainability-related research as well as practice. Religious communities have key resources (e.g., influence on the moral values and lifestyles of adherents) to influence sustainable development processes worldwide. The research team explores these resources and thus transfers religion-related as well as sociological knowledge into sustainability research. It aims to promote interdisciplinary cooperation between sustainability research and researchers in the field of religion.

[Translate to English:] Frank C. Krysiak

Prof. Dr. Frank C. Krysiak

Frank Krysiak has been Professor of Environmental Economics at the University of Basel since 2006 and is responsible for the economics part of the Master in Sustainable Development. From 2014-2021, he directed the energy research center SCCER CREST at the University of Basel. His research areas are the long-term effects of climate and energy policies as well as the economic theory of sustainability.

Prof. Dr. Rui Mata

Associate Professor for Cognitive and Decision Sciences, Faculty of Psychology. On a mission to understand and improve human decision-making through the use and development of evidence-based practices.

Prof. Dr. Oliver Nachtwey

Associate Professor of Social Structure Analysis at the Department of Social Sciences. His research focuses on the transformation of work and social modernization as well as their influence on social structure. Furthermore, he is studying changes in political representation, protests, and social movements. His recent research focuses on the social impact of digitalization, especially how digital technologies are legitimized.

Prof. Dr. Volker Roth

Professor of Informatics in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. He leads the Biomedical Data Analysis research group. His research interests are in machine learning methods and their applications in life and natural sciences.

Prof. Dr. Catherine Roux

Assistant Professor of Industrial Economics and Regulation of Energy Markets. In her research, she focuses on industrial economics, applied microeconomics and game theory, competition policy, and energy markets. Especially cross-market or cross-game cooperation as well as the interplay between competition and sustainable consumer behavior and the resulting implications for market regulation. She usually combines theoretical studies with experimental laboratory methods.

Prof. Dr. Heiko Schuldt

Professor of Informatics at the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, where he leads the Databases and Information Systems Research Group. Research Interests: Big Data, novel methods for distributed management of large heterogeneous data sets, data and information integration, analysis of sensor data streams, and innovative methods for searching large multimedia data collections (Multimedia Retrieval).

Prof. Dr. Hannes Weigt

Professor of Energy Economics, Head of the Research Unit for Sustainable Energy and Water Supply (Forschungsstelle für Nachhaltige Energie und Wasserversorgung, FoNEW). His research focuses on the analysis of energy markets and energy policy, in particular on electricity markets and model-based scenario development. A special focus lies on Swiss hydropower in the context of climate change, market uncertainties, and local ecological and economic impacts.

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