The University of St.Gallen honors outstanding researchers with awards and prizes. Prizes and awards highlight special achievements. Premiums reward achievements and serve as an incentive.
In order to make the social impact of its research more visible, the HSG has created the Impact Award. This award recognizes research with a clearly identifiable impact in practice. Up to three projects are awarded annually, one of which can have a concrete regional reference. The projects can come from all areas of research.
The HSG Latsis Prize is awarded annually at the Dies Academicus to a young researcher at the University of St.Gallen.
In 2024, the following three projects were selected for an Impact Award:
Rules of the game for hybrid forms of work
The flexibilization of work location and time has become an important factor for many companies in the battle for talent. The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated this development. Even though many companies are calling for a return to the office after the end of the pandemic, it is becoming increasingly clear that the future of office work will be hybrid - i.e. partly in the office and partly remote. But what is the best way to implement this form of collaboration? This is where the project by Prof. Dr. Stephan Böhm, Tarek Carls, and Dr. Martina Hartner-Tiefenthaler (TU Wien) comes in. Initiated by the Center for Disability and Integration at the University of St.Gallen and Audi AG, this project identifies ways in which hybrid teams can organise their collaboration in order to increase both efficiency and health.
Green Investments and unequal top incomes
Green finance has fundamentally changed the financial industry. Investments in this area are crucial for sustainable projects and climate neutrality. The research project by Prof. Dr. Ola Mahmoud and Lea Tschan examines the relationship between green investments and income inequality, drawing on data sets from 87 countries from 2004 to 2020, and shows that green investments influence inequality through innovation and technological change. The social significance of green finance is illustrated in the study using examples from Switzerland. Conclusion: Political decision-makers need to balance green investments with social measures in order to ensure an inclusive and sustainable transition. The research project was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).
The EU A.I. Act and the Grand Challenge
In July 2023, a unique competition took place at SQUARE at HSG, in which the planned EU law on artificial intelligence was tested using AI applications. 12 teams from various disciplines took part to test the practicality of the law and developed suggestions for improvement. The event was of great benefit to both the technology companies and the participants, as it provided legal assessments and deepened understanding of the practical application of the law. The event also attracted media interest and received wide, positive coverage. Prof. Dr. Thomas Burri's project is one of the winners of the HSG Impact Award 2024.
In 2023, the following three projects were selected for an Impact Award:
Learning from neural networks
At the latest since the hype around ChatGPT and the possibilities that applications based on artificial intelligence are already creating in our lives, AI is the talk of the town again. Prof. Dr. Damian Borth and Konstantin Schürholt dedicated their project to the question of how we can make neural networks more secure, trustworthy, and sustainable? By analyzing populations of neural networks, the researchers want to find out whether there are any common patterns or structures. This would then make it possible to develop approaches and methods to train neural networks even more efficiently. This is a significant issue in relation to sustainability, but also in terms of the security and trustworthiness of the artificial instances.
Sustainable Aviation
Climate change and sustainability are also at the center of the research project “Sustainable Aviation”. The focus: aviation and the question of how we can make it more sustainable. Although the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has set sustainability goals, the industry as a whole still lacks the know-how on how the sector can manage the transition to decarbonization and achieve the intended goals. What strategies can airlines use to fight climate change? The researchers addressed these and other questions in their project, which culminated in the publication of a book, an industry conference, and a CAS course.
Transparency in climate finance
AI or machine learning is also the focus of the research project of Dr. Anna Stünzi and her two research partners at ETH Zurich, Malte Toetzke and Florian Egli. In the project "Consistent and replicable estimation of bilateral climate finance", an NLP model (Natural Language Processing Model) called ClimateFinanceBERT was developed to identify and classify climate protection projects. The findings and the publication have triggered a broad response: from the United Nations to the Financial Times. This is because the analysis of 2.7 million projects revealed that the officially reported figures on bilateral climate finance show a discrepancy with the actual figures. The model enables contributors, recipients, and NGOs to verify climate finance pledges using uniform criteria. This creates transparency, which allows civil society organizations, for example, to analyze and classify this data independently of the donor side.
In 2022, the following three projects were selected for an Impact Award:
Ethics of the Covid-19 pandemic
In a series of articles in leading public media in the German-speaking world, Prof. Dr. Thomas Beschorner and Prof. Dr. Martin Kolmar intervened in the discussion on the measures associated with the corona pandemic and contributed to the debate with well-founded factual analyses and normative reflections.
Life Design
Life Design is a scientific design approach that originated at Stanford University under the title "Design Your Life". In the award-winning research project, the impact of the St. Gallen Life Design approach for individuals, organizations, and society was investigated, especially with regard to the development of psychological capital.
The Future of Work
The Corona pandemic has kept the world on tenterhooks since 2020. In addition to the fundamental economic and social challenges, there has been an abrupt change in the way companies work together: Working from home, virtual collaboration, and the increased use of digital communication tools gained enormous importance. Not only to maintain their own competitiveness but also out of social responsibility, companies had to find ways to support their employees to ensure long-term health and performance.
The "HSG Latsis Prize" is awarded annually, on the occasion of the "Dies Academicus", to a young and promising research talent at the University of St.Gallen. Completed and independent contributions which have great significance in terms of their practical relevance can be considered for this prize.
Former HSG Latsis Prize Winners
- 2023: Ass.-Prof. Dr. Hannah Smidt (SEPS-HSG)
- 2022: Ass.-Prof. Dr. Jamie Gloor (Diversity and Leadership Science)
- 2021: Ass.-Prof. Dr. Matthias Weber (s/bf-HSG)
- 2020: Ass.-Prof. Dr. Ivo Blohm (IWI-HSG)
- 2019: Ass.-Prof. PhD Beatrix Eugster (CDI-HSG)
- 2018: Dr. Dimitrios Georgakakis (FIM-HSG)
- 2017: Ass.-Prof. Dr. Thomas Epper (FGN-HSG)
Learn more about the most recent Latsis Prize recipient, Prof. Jamie Gloor:
Hans Christoph Binswanger Prize
Every two years, the University of St.Gallen (HSG) awards the Hans Christoph Binswanger Prize to young academics in the social sciences and humanities who do not yet have a permanent academic position (tenure). The prize honours works of an integrative character in fields to which the economist and long-standing HSG Professor Hans Christoph Binswanger (1929–2018) made important contributions. All information can be found on our Hans Christoph Binswanger Prize page.