Prof. Markus Leippold tells us more about his youth, studies, interests and current research in the interview below.

Where did you grow up?
I enjoyed the first three months of my life in Alabama (USA), the next three years in Lyon (France), and then we settled down in cozy St. Gallen for the rest of my childhood.

What were your hobbies as a child? 
I was a sports enthusiast. Not soccer, tennis, ice hockey, or anything else fashionable and trendy. Just track-and-field, running in circles for 1500m and 3000m. Then I switched to Triathlon, but after too many injuries I started my studies at University, ending up as a professor. My former training colleague, after a successful professional career as triathlete, is now selling jogging shoes, together with some Swiss tennis player (who also had (has?) a successful professional career). 

Where did you go to University?
St. Gallen and UZH.

Who were your PhD Advisors?
Heinz Zimmermann and Heinz Müller. 

What is your main research focus?
Climate Finance, Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning

What research are you working on right now that you are really excited about and why?
I am currently working at the intersection of finance and Natural Language Processing (NLP), with a focus on sustainable finance. In the last four years, NLP has made incredible progress with artificial intelligence methods. In my opinion, the text analysis methods used in finance are lagging behind these developments, which opens up a wide range of interesting research questions. Of course, it will take some time for these advanced methods to be accepted in finance. At the same time, I am also doing research outside finance on some fundamental problems of NLP. Together with colleagues at ETH Zurich, I am starting a long-term project funded by the Hasler Foundation on AI-based verification of scientific statements, where we are trying to implement a system that helps to improve science communication. Especially in the wake of threatening challenges like the pandemic and climate change, science communication is central to our society. We as a society need to rely on and trust scientific knowledge in addition to social, economic, and political knowledge, which requires that scientific knowledge is communicated in an accessible and understandable way not only for experts but also for politicians, journalists, and laypeople   
 

Tell us something exciting that happened to you in the last five years? 
The most exciting thing that has happened to me in the last five years was the birth of my two children. They are the two most important "publications" in my life. And they have made me change my research agenda to topics related to climate change.

What do you do in your spare time?
Before becoming a father, I spent most of my time climbing around in the mountains. After the birth of my daughter, I had to risk-adjust my hobbies. Now, I am just trying to stay in shape so that I will be able to keep up with my kids when they grow up.  

What is your favorite holiday destination?
I love to go back to Kalymnos, a small Greek island. It is a climbing paradise and I bolted a whole climbing sector (Lambda on Telendos) with my friends. It would be great to see my kids climbing my routes one day.

Who is your all-time hero or heroine and why ?  
Anderl Heckmair, the mountaineer who led the first successful ascent of the Eiger North Face in July 1938. When I climbed the Eiger North Face in 2011, I was equipped with the most modern mountain equipment. When you imagine how they climbed this unfriendly area, it's just incredible.

What is your favorite quote?
“They did not know it was impossible so they did it” - Mark Twain

What languages do you speak?
German and English, and some very (very!) rusty French and Spanish.