Florian Berg

The 2025 Financial Times Responsible Business Awards has recognized the following MIT Sloan-affiliated faculty and staff:  Florian Berg (principal research scientist; lecturer; Aggregate Confusion project co-founder), Julian Koelbel (research affiliate; Aggregate Confusion project co-founder), Roberto Rigobon (Society of Sloan Fellows Professor of Management and professor of Applied Economics; faculty director of the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative), Jason Jay (director of the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative; senior lecturer), John Sterman (Jay W. Forrester Professor of Management and professor of System Dynamics; co-faculty director of the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative), Andrew Jones (executive director and co-founder of Climate Interactive; research affiliate), Bethany Patten (executive director of MIT Climate Policy Center; senior lecturer), Krystal Noiseux (senior associate director of MIT Climate Pathways Project), and Michael Sonnenfeldt (Climate Pathways Project Leadership team; founder and chairman of MUUS & Company). These awards recognize faculty, researchers, and students for positive societal and environmental impact achieved at business schools in three categories: academic projects which impact policy or practice, teaching based on innovative research, and student start-up or non-profit projects.

MIT Sloan’s Aggregate Confusion Project (led by Berg, Jay, Koelbel, and Rigobon) was a winner in the “Academic research with impact” category. The Aggregate Confusion Project is addressing problematic inconsistency in ESG (environmental, social, and governance) ratings by advocating for more transparency and better methodologies to improve the quality of ESG measurement in the financial sector. Their research has had significant impact on policymakers, rating agencies, investors, and regulators, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

In the same category for impactful academic research, the MIT Climate Policy Center’s Climate Pathways Project a “Highly Commended” designation (recognizing Sterman, Jones, Patten, Sonnenfeldt, Jay, and Noiseux). The CPP leverages interactive simulations C-ROADS (Climate Rapid Overview and Decision Support) and En-ROADS, co-developed by Climate Interactive and MIT Sloan, to test and visualize global impacts of policies and advance the adoption of evidence-based climate policy through public- and private-sector leaders.

Also “Highly Commended,” in the category for teaching based on innovative research, were Jay and Sterman for integrating the Sustainability Initiative’s transition risk assignment using the En-ROADS climate solutions simulator into the curriculum of both MBA and executive-education students, enabling them to assess climate change transition risks for businesses in real-world contexts.

The awards were announced (for research and teaching above) in January 2025.