Prof. Dr. Florian Egli
Group Head
Florian Egli heads the Public Policy for the Green Transition research group at TUM.
He completed his PhD at the Energy and Technology Policy Group at ETH Zurich where he worked there as a Senior Researcher and remains a Lecturer. He is also a Lecturer at the University of St. Gallen and he used to be an Honorary Research Fellow with Prof. Mariana Mazzucato at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) at UCL.
He is a co-founder and the co-president of Expedition Zukunft, an inaugural member and former speaker of the board of the Swiss Young Academy and a regular contributor on Monocle M24.
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Personal website | Publications | Linkedin
e-mail: florian.egli(a)tum.de
phone: +49 151 2880 8292
Dr. Manuela Fritz
Postdoctoral Researcher
Dr. Manuela Fritz is a postdoctoral researcher at the Professorship of Public Policy for the Green Transition and the Professorship for Global Health (Prof. Steinert). Within the scope of her DFG-funded research project “Mercury Rising”, she investigates the health consequences of climate change and the relationship between climate shocks and investment decisions for climate adaptation measures.
Her further research interests lie in the area of development and health economics. In her works, she applies in particular microeconomic and -econometric methods and relies on insurance data, social network data, geodata, climate simulation and health simulation models as well as primary data collected in the field via household surveys.
Before joining the team at TUM, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. She completed her PhD as part of a joint doctorate at the University of Passau and the University of Groningen.
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Personal website | Publications | Linkedin
e-mail: manuela.fritz(a)tum.de
Clara Krämer
Doctoral Researcher
Clara Krämer is a PhD student and researcher at the PPGT group. In her research, she analyses the effects of public policies for decarbonizing firms and households.
Prior to joining PPGT, Clara worked as a policy advisor for fiscal policy in the German Parliament and as an analyst for labour market policy at the OECD.
Clara holds a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from the Hertie School of Governance and a Bachelor's Degree in Philosophy and Economics from the University of Bayreuth, in both of which she focused on quantitative policy analysis.
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e-mail: clara.kraemer(a)tum.de
Tatjana Križan
Team Assistant
Tatjana Križan is working in various part-time roles at TUM, currently dividing her time between the Professorship of Public Policy for the Green Transition, the Professorship of Societal Computing, and the Graduate Center of the School of Social Sciences and Technology. Previously, she held positions at the Chair of Vocational Education and the Munich Center for Technology in Society.
Apart from assisting the teams wherever she can and thus doing what she loves, Tatjana’s main focus lies in the administrative processing of third-party funded projects, course planning, exam management, amongst others.
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e-mail: tatjana.krizan(a)tum.de or ppgt(a)sot.tum.de
phone: +49 89 289 28001 on Wednesdays | +49 89 289 24249 on Mondays and Thursdays
Robin Krone
Research Assistant
Robin Krone is a research assistant at the PPGT research group. He is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Management and Technology at TUM, combining a technical focus on sustainable energies with a management focus in finance. His academic interests include climate finance and policy instruments for mobilizing private capital, building on experience in impact-focused private equity.
Robin holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Mannheim and was part of the IBEA program, which included semesters abroad in the U.S., Singapore, and Brazil.
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e-mail: robin.krone(a)tum.de
Clemens-Maria Lehofer
Doctoral Researcher
Clemens joined PPGT as a doctoral candidate and research associate in Summer 2024. He is working on topics in finance in climate-technology innovation and green industrial policies.
Prior to joining PPGT, Clemens served at the European Central Bank with a focus on climate scenario analysis, including chairing work for the Network for Greening the Financial System. He gained further professional experience in financial policy and industry at the UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative, Siemens Energy and others.
Clemens holds a Master’s Degree in Management & Technology from TUM, with a focus on energy markets and energy technology and academic stays in Zurich, Milan and Copenhagen. He conducted his Master’s thesis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research on the topic of fossil fuel corporate financing.
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e-mail: clemens.lehofer(a)tum.de
Dr. Nathalie Luck
Postdoctoral Researcher
Nathalie Luck is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the PPGT group.
In her current research, she explores financing options for the green transition in Ukraine and examines the role of social equity in green transition processes in emerging and developing countries. With a background in applied microeconomics, her broader research interests include climate change mitigation, environmental conservation, and the green transition in the agricultural sector, with a particular emphasis on developing countries. Her work integrates microeconomic methods with interdisciplinary approaches.
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e-mail: nathalie.luck(a)tum.de
Felipe Andres Navarro Martinez
Research Assistant
Felipe Navarro is a research assistant at the PPGT research group. He holds a bachelor's degree in Molecular Biotechnology Engineering from the University of Chile. Currently, he is pursuing a master's degree in Responsibility in Science, Engineering, and Technology (RESET) at TUM, focusing on science and technology (S&T) policy and narratives. His interdisciplinary interests include sustainability projects, building on his experience at the TUM SEED Center, and exploring synthetic biology initiatives, such as his participation in the iGEM Munich team this year.
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e-mail: felipe.navarro(a)tum.de
Leander Müller
Doctoral Researcher
Leander Müller is a PhD student and researcher at the PPGT research group. In his research, he investigates public policy and energy modelling for industrial decarbonization.
He holds a M.Sc. in Industrial Engineering from RWTH Aachen. During his studies, he focused on renewable energies, hydrogen technologies as well as sustainable development and conducted a research stay at the Climate Compatible Growth research group, which is led by the Oxford and Loughborough University.
Leander currently takes an educational leave from his work as a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
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e-mail: leander2.mueller(a)tum.de
Dr. Malte Toetzke
Postdoctoral Researcher
Malte Toetzke is a PostDoc at the PPGT Group holding a TUM Global Postdoc Fellowship. He focuses on the global transition towards net-zero emissions, informing public policy with evidence generated via novel data science and machine learning approaches. His main research areas are climate-tech innovation, climate finance, and green industrial policy and his research has been published and presented in leading academic journals (Nature Sustainability, Nature Climate Change) and machine learning conferences (NeurIPS, ICLR). Malte is also a co-founder of a tech-startup based on natural language processing and computer vision technology.
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e-mail: malte.toetzke(a)tum.de
Linda Widdel
Doctoral Researcher
Linda Widdel is a PhD researcher at the PPGT group. Her research focuses on the role of technologies in the green transition, with a particular emphasis on technology phase-outs and the social and political conditions that support them. Her broader research interests include energy policy, environmental governance, and biodiversity protection.
From 2020 to 2025, Linda worked as a researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI) in Karlsruhe, where she focused on sustainability transitions and energy policy. She also completed study and research stays at ETH Zurich and the University of California, Berkeley.
Linda holds a Master’s Degree in Democracy and Global Transformations from the University of Helsinki and a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
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e-mail: linda.widdel(a)tum.de
Katharina Wildgruber
Doctoral Researcher
Katharina Wildgruber is a PhD student and researcher at the PPGT group. In her research, she investigates public financing options for the green transition and corresponding policy implications.
She holds a M.Sc. in Industrial Engineering from KIT. During her studies, she focused on energy economics and conducted research stays at ETH Zurich and NTNU Trondheim.
Katharina currently takes an educational leave from her work as a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
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e-mail: katharina.wildgruber(a)tum.de
Patrick Zeitinger
Doctoral Researcher
Patrick Zeitinger is a doctoral candidate at PPGT. In his research, he focuses on the climate finance, risk and political economy.
Since 2017, Patrick has been working for the development-oriented MSME banking group ProCredit in various roles. He has worked as team leader responsible for credit risk, ESG risks and renewable energy project finance, and he currently acts as a supervisory board member of the banking group and of two subsidiaries.
Patrick holds a Master’s Degree in Global Political Economy and Finance from The New School in New York and a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science and Economics from Goethe-University Frankfurt.
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e-mail: patrick.zeitinger(a)tum.de
Visiting Researchers and Master Thesis Students
Caroline Breit
Master's Thesis Student
Caroline Breit is a master’s student in Politics & Technology, currently writing her master’s thesis at PPGT. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Utrecht University.
Before joining the master’s programme, she worked at ProjectTogether, where she helped build a public–private funding model and worked closely with municipalities.
Her master’s thesis examines the mobilisation of private capital for municipal climate action, exploring new pathways through which municipalities across Europe can finance the green transition. The research analyses financial instruments and political-economic conditions using comparative analysis and expert interviews.
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Qian Du
Visiting Doctoral Researcher
Qian Du is a visiting doctoral researcher at the PPGT Group. She holds both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Industrial Engineering from Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (NUAA) in China. Her academic research focuses on promoting the development of renewable energy and formulating relevant policies.
Qian’s work involves forecasting the future development trends of photovoltaic (PV) technology and exploring its carbon reduction potential and cost dynamics under various installation pathways. She also investigates critical issues related to government subsidies in renewable energy development. In addition, she employs economic methodologies to analyze the causal relationships between renewable energy growth and various policies or influencing factors. Qian enjoys integrating multidisciplinary approaches to foster innovative research.
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Stefanie Günther
Master's Thesis Student
Stefanie Günther is a Master’s student in Politics & Technology, currently writing her thesis at the Chair of Design and Transdisciplinarity in collaboration with PPGT. In her thesis, she operationalizes Mariana Mazzucato’s ROAR framework for mission-oriented innovation policy. Using ProjectTogether as a case study, she is developing a practical policy toolkit to enable transformative state action within the German public administration.
Drawing on her Bachelor’s in Psychology from the University of Innsbruck, she is interested in the connection between human well-being, decision-making, grand societal challenges and the transition to sustainability. Steffi also brings professional experience in sustainability consulting and has co-founded a political initiative, the BaumEntscheid München.
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Noah Kim
Master's Thesis Student
Noah Kim is a master’s student in Science, Technology & Policy at the ETH Zurich and currently writes his thesis at the PPGT at TUM. The thesis analyses the structure of international finance flows into climate adaptation measures. To that end, the CRS data by the OECD is classified using LLMs.
His other academic interests focus on energy and mobility policies, originating from his bachelor degree in mechanical engineering, which he also completed at ETH Zurich.
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Thilo Krechlak
Master's Thesis Student
Thilo Krechlak is a master’s student in Politics and Technology at TUM, specializing in Sustainability. At the PPGT, he researches how Venture Capital investors (VCs) can assess start-ups’ potential for positive biodiversity impact. To this end, he develops a practically informed assessment framework that helps evaluate firms engaged in biodiversity‑enhancing technologies and substitutes in terms of their influence on biodiversity.
Further academic interests lie at the intersection of technology and governance, exploring innovative and interdisciplinary solutions to political and technological challenges. Thilo completed his bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences, majoring in Governance at the University of Freiburg.
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Philina Lelgemann
Master's Thesis Student
Philina Lelgemann is a master's student in Politics & Technology, currently writing her thesis at the PPGT. Her research investigates how the EU’s Just Transition Fund is allocated across regions with varying risk profiles. By developing a multidimensional vulnerability framework she explores how regions shape their investment strategies and whether these differ based on their specific vulnerabilities.
Her academic interests lie in interdisciplinary research at the intersection of politics, economics, and technology. She focuses on EU governance and sustainability policies, especially those aimed at supporting a socially just transition to a low-carbon economy. Philina holds a Bachelor's degree in Politics and Economics from the University of Münster.
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Bianca Lucaci
Visiting Doctoral Researcher
Bianca Lucaci is a visiting doctoral researcher at PPGT. Her doctoral research investigates the actors, processes, and power dynamics shaping the EU’s sustainability reporting policy and its broader impact on the governance of sustainable finance.
Prior to her doctoral studies, Bianca served as a Young Professional at the European Patent Office (EPO), working in the International Affairs Directorate and the President's Office.
She holds an M.Sc. in Politics and Technology from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and a Bachelor's degree in International Relations and European Studies from the West University of Timisoara. During her Master's studies, she completed an internship in ESG business services within the insurance sector. As a Bachelor student, Bianca spent one exchange semester at the University of Tübingen and interned at the Romanian diplomatic mission in Munich.
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Marlene Seidel
Master's Thesis Student
Marlene Seidel is a master’s student in Economic Policies for the Global Bifurcation, an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master in economics supported by the EU. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Business, Economics and Social Sciences (BSc) from the WU Vienna and another in Political Science (BA) from the University of Vienna.
With experience in journalism and academic research at the intersection of economics, politics, and environmental issues, she aims to contribute research that bridges economic analysis with political and ecological realities in times of transition. Her master’s thesis at the PPGT draws on the newest European Working Conditions Survey to examine job-quality differences across green, neutral, and brown occupations, offering empirical insight into the labor-market dimension of Europe’s decarbonization pathway.
Felix Zaussinger
Visiting Researcher
Felix Zaussinger is a guest researcher at the PPGT group. His research focuses on the nexus between labour markets and the energy/green transition.
Felix works as an Advisor and Project Manager at First Climate, a climate solutions company, with a focus on CDR. Before, he worked on diverse topics (climate adaptation, nature-based solutions, labour markets, energy transition, earth observation) for several private and public organisations (ETH Zurich, GIB Foundation, European Commission, Hydrosolutions, TU Wien).
He holds a Master’s Degree in Science, Technology & Policy from ETH Zurich, a Bachelor’s Degree in Geomatics Engineering from TU Wien and a Certificate in ESG & Sustainable Finance from HSG.
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