Lorenz Hilty has been Professor of Computer Science and Sustainability at the University of Zurich since 2010. In a secondary position, he is the university management's delegate for sustainability.
Lorenz Hilty studied computer science and psychology at the University of Hamburg, where he habilitated in computer science on the topic of "Environmental Information Processing" in 1996. He conducted research at the Institute for Economics and Ecology at the University of St. Gallen and at the Research Institute for Application-Oriented Knowledge Processing FAW in Ulm, among others. From 2000 to 2010 he was responsible for the development and management of the department "Technology and Society" at the Swiss Federal Research Institute Empa. A visiting professorship in New Media and Sustainability took him to Vienna, and an affiliate professorship at the Center for Sustainable Communications at KTH to Stockholm.
His work deals with opportunities and risks of digital transformation for sustainable development and with structuring this interdisciplinary field of research. He is a member of the GI's Environmental Informatics Expert Committee, the Steering Committee of the Foundation for Technology Assessment (TA-Swiss), the Steering Committee of the Zurich Business Climate Platform, and the University Council of the University of Konstanz.