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
Caroline Breit
Research Assistant
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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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 the topic of finance for climate-tech innovation. He is also currently a participant in the FIP Programme at the International Monetary Fund.
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 experience in policy and industry at the UN Environment Programme, 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 climate risk.
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e-mail: clemens.lehofer(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 Research Fellows
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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Dr. Manuela Fritz
Research Fellow
Dr. Manuela Fritz is a postdoctoral researcher at 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
Philina Lelgemann
Research Fellow
Philina Lelgemann is a research affiliate at PPGT. Her research focuses on the evaluation and allocation patterns of EU funds, with particular attention to the EU’s Just Transition Fund. Through the development of a multidimensional vulnerability framework, she examines how regions shape their investment strategies and whether spending choices align with specific regional transition needs and challenges.
Her academic interests lie in interdisciplinary research at the intersection of politics, economics, and technology. She is currently undertaking a Blue Book Traineeship at the European Commission in DG COMM.
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Dr. Nathalie Luck
Research Fellow
Nathalie Luck is a research fellow at PPGT. Her research interests lie in the field of development economics and agricultural economics. In her work, she uses randomized controlled trials, survey experiments, and mixed‑methods and qualitative research to examine the green transition in the agricultural sector and environmental conservation in developing countries. She is also interested in climate finance, green energy, and political economy.
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e-mail: nathalie.luck(a)tum.de
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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Felix Zaussinger
Research Fellow
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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Master Thesis Students
Sofia Calderon
Master's Thesis Student
Sofia Calderon Lapomarel is a master's student in Sustainable Resource Management, currently writing her thesis at the PPGT on pathways to decarbonize the maritime sector. Her research models geospatial deployment strategies for low-carbon shipping fuels under regional supply and infrastructure constraints.
She holds a bachelor´s degree in Environmental Engineering from Costa Rica, where she developed a foundation in systems thinking and an interest in how environmental externalities, such as carbon emissions and resource depletion, can be structurally embedded within economic logic.
Alongside her studies, she works as a working student at Allianz on climate adaptation in property and casualty insurance, where she explores how physical climate risk translates into financial decision-making.
Etienne Grandemange
Master's Thesis Student
Etienne Grandemange is a master's student in Management & Technology at TUM, specializing in Sustainable Energies and Energy Markets. Etienne holds a Bachelor's degree in Management & Technology from TUM, with a specialization in Computer Science, and spent an exchange semester at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. His academic interests lie at the intersection of energy policy, decarbonization, and emerging market development, with his Master's thesis focusing on industrial decarbonization in East Africa through the deployment of geothermal energy. Prior to joining PPGT, Etienne worked as a student assistant at the TUM SEED Center, supporting research on rural electrification in the Global South.