Sustainability at ISTA

• Organization
  • Overview
  • Management
  • Area Chairs
  • Boards
  • Administration

The Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) aims to become a role model in research, education, and institutional governance. In addition to conducting curiosity-driven research, we want to make our operations as sustainable as possible and fit for the future. Climate change is rapidly altering the stable conditions needed for cutting-edge research. At ISTA, we strive to do great research in an environmentally responsible way while preparing future scientists for the challenges ahead.

Experimental research has a substantial footprint due to the high energy use, high-grade materials, and intricate equipment we use daily.

Therefore, making academic research more sustainable is a big challenge, but one we strive to address in our daily operations. Besides making the Campus more environmentally friendly, we also highlight sustainability in our research and teaching to prepare our staff and scientists to improve the future of foundational research.

For example, the Pellicciotti and Muller research groups focus on understanding climate topics by investigating glaciers and cloud formation, respectively. Beyond climate science, the Freunberger and Ibáñez groups are advancing energy storage and conversion through next-generation batteries and thermoelectric nanomaterials. The Pieber group has a sustainable strategy for synthetic organic chemistry, while the Alistarh group works to reduce the digital carbon footprint by designing energy-efficient machine learning algorithms.

Furthermore, several courses and training programs are focusing on understanding and communicating climate-related topics are now part of the student curricula and offered to staff members as well.

At ISTA, we believe that sustainability is first about reducing our own environmental footprint. But furthermore, it is also about collaborations and fostering a more just and equitable world. Beyond measures on Campus, our sustainability strategy aims to raise awareness among our community and in society about the issues, solutions, and benefits of sustainability measures. In addition, we want to provide knowledge that is necessary to enable systemic change for a healthier society.

Mission of the Sustainability Office

Sustainability projects

Despite the young age of our Institute, we constantly look for multi-level improvements, such as increasing energy efficiency of buildings and experiments, incorporating sustainability into our teaching, improving plastic recycling from single-use lab materials, promoting biodiversity, reducing our overall material use. As a collective endeavor, participation across the campus community is the key to success.

Past and ongoing projects

• Monitoring the commute to campus
• Reducing the energy use of buildings
• ISTA sustainability seminar series courses
• Reducing the electricity consumption of experiments
• Helium recovery system for cooling magnets
• Biodiversity promotion and monitoring on campus
• Greenhouse Gas (GHG) accounting
• Promoting sustainable research on Campus
• Green Certification of labs and events

Future projects

As a scientific institution, we want to implement good practice in all of our efforts. We strive to attract the most talented and dedicated researchers who are passionate about making a positive impact on the world. Together, we can make a difference!

• Promote re-usage/recycling of equipment to further reduce our footprint
• Increase environmentally friendly meetings and travel
• Map the material footprint of the Campus and create an environmental dashboard

People

Jeroen Dobbelaere

Sustainability Management

Jeroen.Dobbelaere@ist.ac.at

Former interns

Hannah Koch

2025

Sophie Watts

2024

Awards

• Sustainability Award 2026 – silver
• Sustainability Award 2024 – silver
• Ökomanagement NÖ for green events on campus – 2026
• FWF Zero Emissions Award from the alpha+ Foundation of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) – 2026
• FWF Zero Emissions Award from the alpha+ Foundation of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) – 2025
• ISTA Sustainability Awards (internal)

Green Meetings

Scientific communication and collaboration are key to share gathered knowledge and to facilitated novel discoveries. Meetings, gatherings, outreach events and publications have been key in the success of basic research but have a substantial environmental footprint. To reduce our impact as much as possible we aim to conduct events on campus as environmental friendly as possible and conduct several events as “Green Meetings”

Sustainability Stories