Uwe Schneidewind New President of Wuppertal Institute

Professor Uwe Schneidewind will take over as President and Chief Research Executive at the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy on 1 March 2010.

The office of President of the Wuppertal Institute became vacant in January 2008 following the retirement of Professor Peter Hennicke, who had replaced founding President Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker. After an intensive search, the high-ranking commission appointed to select a successor chose Uwe Schneidewind.

"I am looking forward to the opportunity to join with all involved to shape the leading role that the Wuppertal Institute has established in the course of almost twenty years in the international environment and climate debate," says Professor Schneidewind.

Uwe Schneidewind, born in 1966, is an economist who began his career in the field of strategic environmental consulting. From there he moved to the Institute of Economics and Ecology at St Gallen University in Switzerland, where he led research projects and gained his doctoral and senior post-doctoral degrees. In 1997 he moved to the Carl von Ossietzky University in Oldenburg, where he served as president from 2004 to 2008.

His research focuses on strategies for sustainable change at the levels of organisation, branch and institution. In this field he has published thirteen books and more than eighty articles over the years.

"In Uwe Schneidewind we have succeeded in recruiting a renowned scientist in the field of sustainability research," says Professor Manfred Fischedick, Vice President of the Wuppertal Institute and chair of the appointment commission, who is plainly pleased with the choice. "The team at the Wuppertal Institute expects to work together with him to hone the Institute's profile as a scientific think tank with a long-term interdisciplinary and intersectoral perspective."

"Ideas of economic, political and social transformation are increasingly central in the environmental and climate discussion," says Professor Schneidewind. He therefore intends to put the special competence of the Wuppertal Institute to work to research and plan such system transitions at the international, national and regional level and "to continue the work of expanding and networking the Wuppertal Institute's research specialities with universities and research institutes across the globe."

Press release by Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy

Responsible: Prof. Dr. Manfred Fischedick, Vice President

Contact: Dorle Riechert, Public Relations

Tel. +49 (0)202 2492-180, Fax +49 (0)202 2492-108

E-mail: pr@wupperinst.org