Double second place wins at the BMWFW Sustainability Award 2016

MODUL University Vienna celebrated a double second place win at the biannual Sustainability Award for higher educational institutes, awarded by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Economy (BMWFW).

In the category of Communication and Decision Making, the Department of New Media Technology won second with their project ‘DecarboNet’. It is a multidisciplinary effort to identify determinants of collective awareness, translating awareness into behavioural change, and providing novel methods to analyse and visualise the underlying processes. The project’s core innovations are built around a context-specific repository of carbon reduction strategies. To continuously refine this repository, the DecarboNet platform utilises citizen-generated content in a societal feedback loop that enables an adaptive process of social innovation.

 “Crowdsourcing in the tradition of games with a purpose is an effective way to engage citizens in the climate change debate, and to convey scientific knowledge in a playful manner,’’ says Arno Scharl, Head of the Department of New Media and Scientific Coordinator of DecarboNet. ‘’The Climate Challenge is the result of DecarboNet and a collaboration between MODUL University Vienna and several European and overseas partners, and we are proud to have been selected as one of Austria’s most innovative environmental projects by the Sustainability Award committee.”

The second second place win of the day was in the ‘Student Initiatives’ category with the project ‘SusToGo – Sustainability to Go’. In collaboration with four other Austrian universities, students from MU’s Sustainability Committee organized a number of events to increase sustainability awareness and encourage interdisciplinary exchange on the topic.

MU Alumna Elena Zepharovitch, the driving force behind MU’S involvement in SusToGo, accepted the award along with her two other second place wins for ‘Sustainability Challenge’ in the category ‘Curriculum and Instruction’, and ‘’Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development’ in the category ‘Regional Cooperation’.

‘’It’s great to have won the award for our involvement last year in SusToGo. I hope it inspires current students to continue MU’s engagement in sustainable practices and activities,’’ says Elena.

Congratulations to all the students, staff and faculty involved in these projects!

Photo: Elena Zepharovich with her three awards