At the University of St.Gallen (HSG), research is not just about academic excellence – it also aims to provide concrete answers to societal challenges. In the field of sustainability, HSG pursues the goal of further expanding its expertise, connecting researchers, and enabling impact beyond the scientific community. Numerous research projects that have received national and international awards demonstrate how this aspiration is made a reality.
One example of award-winning research with far-reaching impact is the work of Julian Kölbel, Assistant Professor at the Centre for Financial Services Innovation. With his research focus on sustainable finance, he explores how financial markets can be made more sustainable. For the Aggregate Confusion: The Divergence of ESG Ratings project, which he developed together with Florian Berg and Roberto Rigobon, he received two prestigious awards: the Pagano and Zechner Prize from the Review of Finance and in 2024, and in early 2025, the Financial Times Responsible Business Education Award in the category "Research making a real difference”.
"I am delighted to receive these awards," said Kölbel. "They are a great recognition of our work and a strong impetus for further research in the field of sustainable investments. Our research shows that there are still many unresolved issues in measuring sustainability – it is now our task to address them."
To bring new insights to a wider audience, Julian Kölbel hosts the Innovations in Sustainable Finance podcast and has already aired over 20 episodes, discussing current ideas, research findings, and practical examples relating to sustainable financial markets. He is also actively involved in the HSG Impact Scholar Community, an internal platform that connects HSG researchers working on sustainability-related topics across disciplines and supports them in their research work by organising world cafés and discussion rounds. During a session with Professor R. Edward Freeman, Personality in Residence at SQUARE, Kölbel discussed how research can bring about real change. He summarises his understanding of impact as follows:
"For me, impact means that my research changes the thinking or behaviour of relevant actors – be it companies, investors or political decision-makers. I measure impact by whether new findings are taken up, discussed and applied practically."
Prof Dr Julian Kölbel, Assistant Professor of Sustainable Finance (FSI-HSG)
To structurally strengthen impact-oriented research, HSG offers further targeted support services. For example, under the direction of Professor Judith Ströhle (ACA & IWÖ), a podcast Numbers & Narratives was launched along with the Sustainability in Numbers seminar series to raise the profile of quantitative sustainability research and promote exchange between researchers. Additionally, various ESG databases are available to the HSG faculty. These data sets are freely accessible to students and researchers at HSG and enable evidence-based sustainability research.
Across the HSG researchers have been recognised for their work. For example, Professor Rolf Wüstenhagen who was included in Stanford University’s renowned “World’s Top 2%” ranking for his research on renewable energy in 2024.
In the same year, Dr Anna Stünzi and colleagues from ETH Zurich received the Responsible Business Education Award (Financial Times) for a project that the jury of representatives from industry and academia evaluated in terms of its positive impact on solving real-world challenges and whether it results in a lasting societal benefit, among other things. The subject of the project is an NLP model developed to improve transparency in international climate finance, which the research team presented to representatives of donor countries who are considering using such models for their climate finance reporting.
A year earlier, this project had also won the HSG Impact Award. With such recognition, the University of St.Gallen honours research projects that have a particularly visible impact on society, the economy or the environment. Further projects that won the HSG Impact Awards in 2023 and 2024 can be found on the HSG website. In addition, IRCAI, an international research centre for artificial intelligence supported by UNESCO, selected the 2023 publication as one of the ten outstanding AI solutions committed to achieving the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
