Biography
Prof. (FH) Timo Ohnmacht, Dr. phil.,Dipl. soz. tech., was born on 3 September 1979 in Rottweil am Neckar (Germany). He is married, has two children and lives in Lucerne.
Nationalities: German & Swiss.
Timo studied transport and sociology at the Technical University of Berlin (Prof. Dr. Andreas Knie), Lancaster University (UK) (Prof. John Urry) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) (Prof. Dr. Kay Axhausen). He was also a student assistant at the Centre for Technology and Society (ZTG), Berlin (Prof. Dr. Hans-Liudger Dienel). This was followed by research trips to EPFL Lausanne (Prof. Dr. Vincent Kaufmann) and MUIC Bangkok, Thailand.
From 2004 to 2006, Timo Ohnmacht worked on the project "Mobility Biographies and Social Networks" at the ETH Zurich (Prof. Kay W. Axhausen), financed by ifmo (Institute for Mobility Research), a branch of the BMW Group, on the basis of which he wrote his doctoral dissertation on leisure transport at the University of Basle (supervised by Prof. Max M. Bergman, co-supervised by Prof. Kay W. Axhausen).
From 2009 to 2011, Timo Ohnmacht was the content project manager of the Mobility and Transport Microcensus for 2010 in the Federal Office for Spatial Development of the Federal Department for the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications DETEC in Bern.
Since 2011, he has been researching and lecturing at the intersection of the topics of energy, the built environment, transport and society at the Lucerne School of Business’s Competence Centre for Mobility.
From February to August 2019, Timo Ohnmacht held the status of a Visiting Professor at Mahidol University - International College (MUIC) in Thailand, where he co-organized the third International Conference on Tourism and Business in Bangkok.
In the spring semester of 2020, he was a lecturer in the University of Lucerne's Department of Sociology.
Since September 2020, Timo Ohnmacht has been project leader of the project "Risk Perception and Tourism Behaviour: How to Control Pandemic Infectious Diseases Through Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs)”, funded by the National Research Programme 78 (NRP) on the topic of "Covid-19" in the amount of 500,000 Swiss francs.
From September 2021 to February 2022, he was interim "Head of Research and Services" at the Lucerne School of Business.
Since May 2022, Timo has been the project leader of Working Package (WP) 6 "New work, mobility and energy" of the project “SWICE – Sustainable Wellbeing for the Individual and the Collectivity in the Energy Transition” within the framework of SWEET – "SWiss Energy research for the Energy Transition" (Lead: EPFL Lausanne). SWEET is a funding programme of the Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE) (the funding for WP 6 is worth 1.2 million Swiss francs).
One of WP6’s main fields of activity is the handling of transport and tourism data and the analysis of changes over time with reference to energy and the built environment.
Timo’s current articles (multi-authored) in the thematic field of sustainability in transport and tourism have been published in the following journals: Transportation, Building and Environment, Schweizerischen Zeitschrift für Soziologie, Transportation, Environment and Planning A, Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, Simulation & Gaming, Current Issues in Tourism, Frontiers in Psychology / Health Psychology, Discover Psychology, International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research (Special Issue on Tourism and Business Research from Asia and Beyond), Environmental Research Communications, Research in Transportation Business & Management, Food Quality and Preference, Journal of Cleaner Production, Energy Research and Social Science, Journal of Sustainable Tourism and Current Issues in Tourism.
Timo Ohnmacht has worked on various research projects in the fields of energy and transport analysis on behalf of the following institutions (current selection): VSS (Schweizerische Verband der Strassen- und Verkehrsfachleute), SNF NFP 78 “Covid-19”, SNF Digital Lives, EU Interreg Alpine Space (project leader MELINDA), SNF NFP 71, ASTRA, ARE, BFE, BAFU, Fachstelle 2000-Watt-Gesellschaft, Schweizerischer Ingenieurs und Architektenverein SIA, Schweizerische Vereinigung der Verkehrsingenieure und Verkehrsexperten SVI, Cantons St. Gall, Lucerne, economiesuisse, City Lucerne, Verkehrsverbund Lucerne, Dienststelle Verkehr und Infrastruktur vif der Kanton Lucernes, City of Berne, Mobility Car-sharing.
