Roland W. Scholz

Following his retirement in 2013, he also worked as an adjunct professor (Privatdozent) at the Department of Psychology at the University of Zurich, is affiliated as Professor Extraordinaire at the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences, School of Public Leadership, Stellenbosch University (SA) and works as project leader at the Fraunhofer Society Project Group for Materials Recycling and Resource Strategies IWKS (Alzenau, Germany).

Scholz served as a senior advisor at the Fraunhofer-Institut für Grenzflächen- und Bioverfahrenstechnik [de] for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology (IGB) and is affiliated with various universities.

According to his work, which manifested itself as part of the Zurich 2000 definition, transdisciplinarity is different from interdisciplinarity, since, as a core characteristic, knowledge integration and mutual learning among science and society together with co-leadership are crucial elements when striving towards socially robust orientations for sustainable development.

Since 1993, he has been an innovator and scientific leader of the first transdisciplinarity laboratory and initiated large-scale transdisciplinary projects on sustainable transitions of urban, agricultural, ecological, technological, economic, and political systems.

However, his work has also contributed to risk and decision research, public health, and the domains of psychology, economics (sustainable finance), organizational sciences, and the didactics of mathematics.