Each year, the DBU office proposes suitable individuals to the Board of Trustees for the German Environmental Award jury. The jury members are elected for two years. The Board of Trustees may extend the mandate for two additional years. The combination of new and old jury members ensures the continuous transfer of experience but also the introduction of new views.
The jury receives the proposals prepared by the DBU office and then deliberates extensively on the candidates and passes on its well-founded recommendation to the DBU Board of Trustees, which is responsible for the final decision. The jury guarantees high quality discussions and decisions and above all: a view beyond the individual disciplines.
Research Associate, University of Bern
Project Manager, ‘Biodiversity in Good Company’ Initiative
Former. Youth delegates for the UN Biodiversity Conference
Ms. Arth is a research associate at the University of Bern and works for the Senate Commission on Fundamental Questions of Biodiversity of the German Research Foundation (DFG). She is also a project manager with the ‘Biodiversity in Good Company’ initiative.
Ms. Adina Arth is a former German youth delegate to the UN Biodiversity Conference. She represented the voice of youth at the 14th UN Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2018 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt (CBD COP 14) and in 2022 in Montreal, Canada (CBD COP 15). From 2018 to 2020, Ms. Arth was active as a Youth Ambassador for the UN Decade on Biological Diversity.
Managing Director at KI Bundesverband e. V.
Vanessa Cann has been Managing Director at KI Bundesverband e. V. since May 1, 2020.
Her areas of responsibility include membership and partner management and association development. She was named one of Forbes’ 30 Most Exciting People Under 30 in 2022 for her dedication to the European AI space. The political scientist previously headed the Artificial Intelligence and Future Mobility platforms at the Bundesverband Deutsche Startups e. V., where she brought startups together with established companies and investors. Vanessa Cann developed her interest in artificial intelligence in political consulting, where she advised Fortune500 companies on their digital policies. She is involved as a mentor for startups and with Women in AI & Robotics
Prof. Dr. Sabine Flamme studied civil engineering at the Münster University of Applied Sciences, completed her doctorate at the BGUH Wuppertal in 2002 and was appointed to the Münster University of Applied Sciences in 2005 to teach material flow and resource management.
Since 2014, she has been spokesperson of the board of the IInstitute for Infrastructure, Water, Resources and Environment (IWARU) at Münster University of Applied Sciences. She is also a member of the board of the DGAW and a founding member and deputy chair of the board of the re!source Stiftung e. V..
Her research activities currently focus on circular value creation in the construction industry, among other things. In this context, it oversees several projects on material flows from anthropogenic stockpiles, the development of recycling processes for building materials and structures, and new business models.
Ms. Flamme is a member of various working groups and has written numerous papers and publications on the above-mentioned topics, among others. In addition, Ms. Flamme was awarded the Urban Mining Award in June 2012.
Photo: © Prof. Dr. Sabine Flamme
Prof. Edeltraud Günther is Director of the UNU-FLORES Institute at the United Nations University in Dresden. Before joining UNU-FLORES, Prof. Günther was Head of the Chair of Business Administration, in particular Sustainability Management and Operational Environmental Economics at the Faculty of Economics at the TU Dresden since 1996. During her time at TU Dresden, she founded and directed PRISMA – Center for Sustainability Assessment and Policy. Her research focuses on environmental management, accounting, and economics with an emphasis on corporate responsibility, corporate carbon and climate accounting, life cycle assessment, and sustainable business management.
Photo: © Foto Hahn, Dresden
Since 2013, Alexandra-Maria Klein has headed the Chair of Nature Conservation and Landscape Ecology at the University of Freiburg. She conducts research on the relationships between land use, biodiversity, and crop pollination. Her work has been funded by the Alfred Töpfer Foundation and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, among others. Klein is one of the most cited scholars. She is Vice President of the Society for Ecology, works for the Swiss National Science Foundation and in Senate Commissions of the German Research Foundation. She was lead author of the World Biodiversity Council’s pollination assessment. She has been a member of various advisory boards in the Ministry of Environment and Agriculture in Baden-Württemberg since 2014 and led the Leopoldina opinion on the management of biodiversity in agricultural landscapes.
Photo: © Felix Fornoff
Professor of Nature Conservation and Landscape Ecology at the University of Freiburg
Andreas Kuhlmann has been Chairman of dena’s Executive Board since July 2015. In this role, he has raised dena’s profile as a driver and pioneer of the energy transition.
He sees the energy transition as one of the most fascinating change processes of the present day, which, in addition to challenges, also brings opportunities. In this sense, he brings his knowledge of the diverse national and international projects, acquired at the interface of business and politics, to the energy and climate policy debate. And he calls for more courage and determination in shaping the framework conditions needed for the energy transition to succeed.
Photo: © Deutsche Energie-Agentur GmbH (dena) / Christian Schlüter
Secretary General at the Climate Research Institute MCC
Since 2015, Dr. Brigitte Knopf has been Secretary General at the Climate Research Institute MCC. Since 2020, she has also been a member and deputy chair of the new expert council on climate issues appointed by the German government. It conducts research on climate economics and energy policy issues in the German and European context, with a substantive focus on the socially just design of the energy transition and with a strategic orientation towards scientific policy advice. As head of the MCC’s Policy Unit, she shapes the institute’s interface with politics, business and civil society and develops analyses and impulses for public discourse.
Prof. Dr. Dirk Messner took over as UBA President on January 1, 2020. He is also a professor of political science at the University of Duisburg-Essen. His work focuses on national and international sustainability research, particularly in the areas of globalization and global governance, transformations towards sustainability, decarbonization of the global economy, sustainability and digital transformation, and international cooperation and social change.
Most recently, he was Director of the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) in Bonn and Vice Rector of the United Nations University (UNU). Before that, he headed the German Development Institute (DIE). As former co-chair of the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), he helped coin the term “transformation,” which describes the necessary restructuring of cities, mobility, energy systems and land use.
Prof. Messner is a member of the “Earth League”, an association of leading scientists in the field of sustainability and Earth systems, and is currently, among others, co-coordinator of “The World in 2050”, a global research consortium for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. He advises the Chinese government as a member of the “China Council on International Cooperation on Environment and Development”.
Prof. Messner holds a doctorate in political science and a habilitation from Freie Universität Berlin. He is the author or co-author of more than 300 publications.
Photo: © Federal Environment Agency / Susanne Kambor
This role includes ZDF’s editorial leadership for the weekday science magazine nano and leadership of the weekly primetime science documentary on Thursdays. Powell studied comparative literature, sociology and ethnology at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, and worked as an editorial assistant at the science magazine hitec while still a student.
She initiated and was responsible for the scientific documentaries at 3sat for more than 10 years and took over the editorial management (ZDF) of nano in 2010.
Photo: © ZDF
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Peter Radgen has held the Chair of Energy Efficiency at the Institute of Energy Economics and Rational Use of Energy (IER) since 2016 and is head of the Graduate and Research School Efficient Use of Energy Stuttgart (GREES). Since its foundation in 2018, he has been active as a board member in the German Datacenter Association (GDA).
He studied mechanical engineering at the University of Karlsruhe and INSA, Lyon, France, and received his PhD from the University of Duisburg. Since his studies, Mr. Radgen has been working on the core issues of the energy transition: Energy efficiency, energy storage, renewable and fossil energy generation as well as CO2 capture, CO2 utilization and CO2 storage.
The current focus of his research is on industrial energy efficiency and defossilization, with a focus on energy-intensive industries and cross-cutting technologies. He is the author of numerous national and international publications in the fields of energy efficiency, energy storage and CCS.
Photo: © IER, University of Stuttgart
Managing Director of Blechwarenfabrik Limburg GmbH
Born and raised in the Rhineland, Annika Roth completed a Bachelor’s degree at the Alanus University of Arts and Social Sciences in Business Administration with the title “Rethinking Business”. In 2014, Roth started at Blechwarenfabrik and was responsible for energy and environmental management, as well as project management and communications. From 2016 to 2019, she completed a part-time Master’s degree in International Management. In 2020, Roth became executive director. She is also involved with climate protection companies, the employers’ association, the Chamber of Industry and Commerce and the Museum of Natural History.
In 2020, Annika Roth was awarded the German Environmental Award together with her brother, Hugo Sebastian Trappmann.
As co-founder and shareholder of the eco mail order company memo AG (www.memoworld.com), Jürgen Schmidt has given the trade numerous new impulses for sustainable business practices. memo AG has received numerous awards for its holistic concept, including the “German Sustainability Award” and 3 first places in German and international rankings of sustainability reports. Jürgen Schmidt himself has also received several awards, including “Eco Manager of the Year” and the “German Environmental Award” from the German Federal Environmental Foundation (DBU).
After more than 20 years as managing director and board spokesman, he is now active in nature conservation, environmental education and as a “sustainable business angel” on a voluntary basis, in addition to his position as a member of the memo AG supervisory board. As a partner of the Terra Institute (www.terra-institute.eu), he accompanies companies on their way to sustainable business strategies and management structures.
Photo: © terra institute, Bressanone/Brixen
Website: http://www.memoworld.com
Professor Eckhard Weidner studied chemical engineering at the Friedrich Alexander University of Erlangen, where he obtained his doctorate in 1985 and his habilitation in 1996. Since 1998, he has headed the Chair of Process Engineering Transport Processes at the Ruhr University in Bochum.
In 2004, he also took over the management of the Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety and Energy Technology UMSICHT in Oberhausen. Since 2018, he has been leading the Fraunhofer Cluster of Excellence Circular Plastics Economy CCPE®.
Photo: © PicturePeople on behalf of Fraunhofer UMSICHT
Marlene Weiß has headed the science department of the Süddeutsche Zeitung since September 2020. Previously, she wrote there from 2014 as an editor, mainly on climate and environmental topics, but also on physics, astronomy and earth sciences.
She studied physics in Zurich, Paris and Lausanne and earned her PhD at the Cern particle research center near Geneva. She then decided to switch to science journalism, with the support of a scholarship from the “Science Journalism Initiative” of the Robert Bosch Foundation, the Donors’ Association for the Promotion of Sciences and Humanities in Germany and BASF. In 2018, she was awarded the AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award in Silver.
Photo: © Blende11
Helga Weisz is a full professor of Industrial Ecology and Climate Change at Humboldt University in Berlin and head of the Future Lab Social Metabolism and Impacts at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). Previously, she was an assistant and associate professor at the Institute for Social Ecology, Vienna, and a visiting professor at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, the University of St. Gallen, and Yale University. Her academic background is molecular biology (Mag. rer.nat. University of Vienna, 1995), cultural studies (PhD, Humboldt University Berlin 2002) and social ecology (venia docendi, Alpen-Adria University Klagenfurt 2006).
Her research interest is in transforming industrial metabolism to stay within planetary boundaries while maintaining its function for human well-being.
Helga Weisz is, among others, a member of the Board of Directors of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria, of the Steering Committee of the Swiss National Science Foundation’s National Research Programme “Sustainable Management” (NRP 73), of the World Resources Forum, an expert member of UNEP’s International Resource Panel, a member of the Advisory Board of the UNDP Human Development Report 2020, and Editor-in-Chief of the transdisciplinary sustainability journal GAIA.
Image: without copyright / free to use
Mr. Wünning holds a doctorate in engineering from RWTH Aachen University. Since 1991, he has worked with his father in his own family business, WS Wärmeprozesstechnik, which develops, manufactures and sells industrial burners.
In addition to his work as managing director, Mr. Wünning is an advocate in the German Engineering Federation (VDMA) for close cooperation between companies and research, as well as a bolder and more committed implementation of the energy transition. Mr. Wünning is a book author and the author of numerous technical and scientific articles.
In 2011, he and his father were awarded the German Environmental Prize by the German Federal Environmental Foundation (DBU) for the development of a low-emission combustion process.
Photo: © Karin Rebstock, Freelance Photojournalist