Tobias Luthe
Mountain Guide, Researcher at the University of Zurich, Founding Director of the MonViso Institute (Italy)

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Tobias Luthe is a transdisciplinary sustainability scientist and a systemic designer. He currently lectures at the ETH Zurich in sustainable engineering and systemic design, at the Università della Svizzera Italiana USI, Lugano, in landscape architecture and mountain resilience, and at the University of Freiburg, Germany, in sustainability leadership. Tobias has been Professor for Sustainability Science and Director of the Research Institute for Tourism at the University of Applied Sciences HTW Chur, Switzerland. Originally trained in forest sciences, wood engineering, environmental economics and sustainability education, Tobias has a background in both the natural and the social sciences. He employs science to help innovate for sustainability, combining and integrating rigorous quantitative (network analysis, footprint accounting, choice experiments, engineering) and qualitative methods (design thinking, backcasting, co-creation, surveys).

His research spans from social-ecological resilience in mountain and Arctic regions (a PECS Stockholm Resilience Center and Future Earth program), to circular economy incubation in tourism-dependent mountain regions, to co-design of ecosystem services with a focus on industrial hemp and Paulownia trees, to sustainability accounting and life cycle assessment, and to bio-inspired, regenerative design of integrated systems from products to buildings to urbanized areas, regional economies and landscapes. He currently co-develops a real-world mountain laboratory for research, education and entrepreneurship in sustainability transformations and systemic design in the Italian Piedmont mountains (MonViso Institute).

With Grown, a lab for regenerative design inspired by outdoor creativity, he won three industry awards in eco-design of skis over the past ten years.