Green Finance

Date: May 8, 2026
Time: 12:15–1:45 PM

This English-language session focuses on sustainable finance as a catalyst for climate action. Moderated by Prof. Nadine Strauss (UZH), Prof. Debjani Bhattacharyya (UZH), Prof. Markus Leippold (UZH) and Scott Ryan (Investature) will discuss current developments in green finance. Topics include ESG criteria, green bonds, impact investing, and the role of financial institutions in the transformation to a low-carbon economy. The event will analyze how capital flows can be directed toward sustainable projects and what challenges exist.

To earn credits, please register for the Lecture Series via the Course Catalog. Interested parties can participate via the following link.
Teams link

Prof. Debjani Bhattacharyya is the Professor for the History of the Anthropocene at the University of Zurich. Sie is also Director of the Digital History Lab of the Department of History of the University of Zurich and PI: FAIRFI, ERC Consolidator (2026-2031). Since 2019, she has been a non-residential fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study of India, at University of Pennsylvania. She is the PI for the project Fair Weather Finance: Historical Antecedents to Climate Risk Management. Before moving to UZH she was an Associate Professor of History at Drexel University. Her work lies at the intersection of legal, environmental, climate history and the history of political economy. Her award-winning book, Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The Making of Calcutta (Cambridge University Press, 2018) documented how legal experimentation through the 18th and 19th century was central to reshaping the political economy of urban land and waterscapes in the Bengal Delta. Currently she is writing a long history of how marine insurance market’s risk apprehensions shaped weather knowledge, colonial climate sciences and a derivatives market in weather futures in the Indian Ocean Region.

Prof. Markus Leippold is Professor of Financial Engineering at the University of Zurich and Director of the Master of Advanced Studies UZH in Finance. Previously, he was a faculty member at Imperial College London. His research spans finance, climate change, natural language processing, and financial economics. He has published extensively in top-tier academic journals and his work has been cited over 7,800 times according to Google Scholar. His research interests include the application of machine learning and natural language processing to financial markets, climate risk assessment, and the development of innovative financial instruments for sustainable finance. He is affiliated with the Swiss Finance Institute (SFI) and has been involved in numerous research projects examining the intersection of finance and sustainability. His work combines rigorous quantitative methods with practical applications to address challenges in financial engineering, risk management, and climate finance.

Scott Ryan is the Founder and CEO of Investature, a seed-stage sustainable finance SaaS platform geared toward the enterprise B2B2E market. Investature is a fintech and climate tech company connecting financial supply chain emissions to sustainable retirement savings and asset management. Scott is a GTM innovator for retirement and asset management and an advisor for climate transition software and sustainable finance. His work focuses on addressing the often-overlooked role of financed emissions and how individual retirement savings and pension funds may be among the largest single drivers of greenhouse gas emissions for many people. He has been featured on numerous podcasts including The Sustainable Finance Podcast and Climate Confident, where he discusses the opportunity of furthering net-zero goals through sustainable finance solutions. His journey from fintech to founding Investature emphasizes the critical role of aligning financial decisions with climate goals and empowering individuals to make their retirement savings work for both profit and planet.

Prof. Nadine Strauß is Assistant Professor of Strategic Communication and Media Management (Tenure Track) at the Department of Communication and Media Research at the University of Zurich. Her research focuses on strategic communication, corporate and financial communication, and the role of communication in addressing organizational and societal challenges such as climate change. She has published research on topics including sustainable finance, ESG reporting, and strategic net‑zero communication. Her work examines how organizations design and use communication to engage stakeholders, create value, and contribute to long‑term organizational performance and societal sustainability.
As an active member of the European Public Relations Education and Research Association (EUPRERA), she was also featured in the #EUPRERApeople series. Drawing on her experience as a Marie Skłodowska‑Curie Fellow at the University of Oxford and her broader research background in financial communication and sustainability communication, she regularly contributes to academic and public discussions on how strategic communication can support sustainable transformation and guide organizations in navigating today’s complex and rapidly evolving media environment.