Julius Ott, a 25-year-old PhD student deeply passionate about sustainable mobility and international collaboration, now works on the Horizon Europe funded project FREE4LIB that focuses on sustainability assessment and a digital product passport for recycling lithium-ion batteries.
After supporting our team as a student assistant, Julius joined the institute full-time in September 2022. He has a bachelor's degree and work experience in Industrial Engineering and is a recent graduate of the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Program in Circular Economy (CIRCLE) with stays in Trondheim, Tokyo and Graz. For his master's thesis, he analyzed the resource efficiency in countries with diverse levels of GDP by structurally decomposing world input-output tables. This research nourished his wish to work in academia.
The international collaboration and industry partnerships in the FREE4LIB project offers him fantastic and unique opportunities to apply the skills and knowledge gained in the past while providing the huge potential to learn new things and grow as a person. In addition, he says, "I am also very grateful to have such nice and bright colleagues that inspire me every day."
To sort his brain out, he usually goes running. If the weather is nice, he uses the weekends and the newly introduced climate ticket to run up different mountains all over Austria. In October, he became Germany's national mountain running champion in a race of 8km with 1200m of elevation gain in Berchtesgaden near Salzburg. He mentioned that "I feel a close connection with nature and the environment by running in the mountains. This makes me want to contribute to sustainable transformation and climate change mitigation with my work. I now have the chance to participate in the mountain running world championships in Innsbruck next year. Although I do not like the concept of countries competing against each other, I believe in the potential of sports (as well as music) to bring people together."