The Executive Board of Ludwig Maximilians Unversity has made Professor Ralf Ludwig, Professor for Applied Physical Geography, the Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO). This underlines the growing importance of sustainability at Germany’s largest university.

University President Professor Matthias Tschöp emphasizes the special responsibility of a university in shaping the future: “Here, we actively engage with today’s questions and develop solutions for tomorrow — generating and sharing knowledge. Yet we do not only want to explain, discuss, and promote sustainability goals in research and teaching, but also implement them directly within the university itself.” Therefore, LMU now has a dedicated Chief Sustainability Officer. With Ralf Ludwig, the President considers the position ideally filled: “Professor Ludwig has long been committed to sustainability in all its dimensions — within the university’s organization as a member of LMU’s Sustainability Committee, as a researcher at the Munich Centre for Sustainability, as the director of a certificate program in Education for Sustainable Development in Teacher Education, and as a co-organizer of the recently concluded LMU Sustainability Week.”

As CSO, Professor Ludwig will continue to expand the university’s contributions to sustainability across all areas of activity – in research, teaching and learning, as well as in talent development, knowledge transfer, and innovation. He will drive the integration of sustainability into the university’s overall strategy, including campus operations and development, and advance the implementation of new initiatives. Professor Ludwig’s focus is on the interconnections between ecological, social, and economic dimensions of sustainability within the university context: “I want to help ensure that LMU, as a place of critical reflection, knowledge creation and transfer, lives up to its self-image as an institution with social responsibility,” he says. “At LMU, we understand sustainability as an integrative, normative, and transformative concept that calls for new forms of scientific and academic collaboration.”