Prof. Dr. Bettina Furrer heads the department „Urban Development“ at the City of Winterthur. Furthermore, she is a member of the Board of Directors of Zürcher Kantonalbank. Bettina Furrer studied environmental sciences at ETH Zurich and did her doctorate on „Climate Strategies of Banks“. After her studies she joined UBS where she and her team developed and implemented the group-wide sustainability strategy. From 2004 to 2018 she was a lecturer and Head of the Institute for Sustainable Development at ZHAW, and between 2014 and 2018 Deputy Head of SCCER CREST.

Reto Knutti is a professor for climate physics and associate vice president for sustainability of ETH Zurich. His research focusses on understanding changes in the global climate system caused anthropogenic greenhouse gases, and on projections of future climate from regional to global scales. He was a lead author on two IPCC reports. Through talks, reports for the public and policymakers and through countless media contributions in Switzerland and abroad he has been instrumental to inform society about the challenge of climate change and the steps required to address it.

Frank Krysiak is professor for environmental economics at the University of Basel since 2006. He heads the Research Network Sustainable Future and is a member of the Master’s Program in Sustainable Development at the University of Basel. From 2014 to 2021, he was Head of the SCCER CREST. His research focusses on energy and climate economics, the influence of environmental policy on technological change and investment, the design of environmental policy under uncertainty and the economics of sustainability.

Prof. Dr. Michael Lehning is the joint WSL / EPFL professor for Cryospheric Sciences and Snow Processes and heads the CRYOS and the “Snow Processes” groups at Lausanne and SLF Davos. His major research areas include: Interaction Snow - Atmosphere; Natural Hazards Forecasting; Turbulence and Boundary Layer Flows and Wind and Solar Renewable Energy. Based on his modelling and measurement expertise, he has made significant contributions to the understanding of snow – terrain – atmosphere interactions in extreme environments.

Prof. Martin Patel has been holding the Chair for Energy Efficiency at University of Geneva since 2013, following his positions at Utrecht University (NL, 2001-2013) and at the Fraunhofer Institute (ISI) in Karlsruhe (Germany, 1993-2000). His research deals with energy savings and emission reduction in buildings and industry as well as with energy storage.

Helma Pöppel is an eighteen-year-old climate activist. She is going to graduate Highschool at the Gymnasium Leonhard in Basel in the summer of 2022 and is very active in her free time; she played soccer for 10 years and enjoys running. She was in the US for one year in 2019/2020, where she developed a great political interest, especially as climate change was seen as a “hoax” in her town. In December 2020, she joined the climate strike to become active in the crisis and not just read about it.

Andrea Schenker-Wicki has been the president of the University of Basel since 2015. She holds a master degree in Food Engineering from ETH Zurich and a master degree in Business Administration from the University of Zurich. In 1990, she obtained a doctoral degree from the University of Freiburg in the field of Operations Research and Information Technology. She habilitated in 1996 at the University of St. Gallen. She held a full professorship in Business Administration at the University of Zurich from 2001 to 2015.  

Jo Vergeat is born and raised in Basel. After her bachelors in geography and sociology, she could enter local parliament for the young green party in 2018. Since 2020 she chairs the special commission of climate protection. In 2021, while studying for her master’s mayor geography, she was elected vice-president of the Grossrat.