Sonia Seneviratne wins German Environmental Award

(CONNECT) Zurich-based climate researcher Sonia Seneviratne has been awarded this year's German Environmental Award. The professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH) will share the prize from the German Federal Environmental Foundation (DBU), which is worth 500,000 euros, with Lars Baumgürtel and Birgitt Bendiek, the managing directors of the German steel galvanizing company ZINQ, based in Gelsenkirchen, according to a statement. She is the first Swiss citizen to receive this award.

DBU Secretary General Alexander Bonde describes Sonia Seneviratne as a “brilliant climate scientist who has gained international renown for her groundbreaking studies in the field of land-climate dynamics, and whose expertise is in demand worldwide".

The climate researcher, who is 51, joined ETH Zurich as an assistant professor in 2007, becoming a full professor in 2016. She is renowned worldwide as a climate researcher and has been a member of the board of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 2023.

She plans to invest her prize money of 250,000 euros in scientific projects, particularly those involving creative climate communication. Seneviratne emphasizes that it is very difficult to obtain funding for projects in this area. The award will be presented by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Chemnitz on 26 October. ce/ww