The Sustainable Finance Research Center (SFRC) was awarded Research Group of the Year 2025 by Corvinus University of Budapest. We are honoured to receive this recognition.

Each year, the University acknowledges outstanding, high-impact and innovative professional groups through an internal competitive call. The award highlights excellence in academic contribution, innovations and institutional impact.  

Founded in 2023, SFRC has rapidly become a leading hub for research at the nexus of finance, ecology, and society. Within just two years, the Centre has secured over €600,000 in international funding, including flagships projects such as NATUREFIN (Interreg Europe) and BioSolar (Biodiversa+). SFRC is also involved in Palgrave Macmillan book titled Biodiversity Finance. 

Our work focuses on developing innovative financial tools that mobilise capital towards nature-positive outcomes, collaborating across different disciplines, and with non-academic partners as well. Our centre nurtures the talents equipping the next generation of sustainable finance researchers. We thank Corvinus University for the support to advance our mission. The awarded memebers include:

• Helena Naffa – Associate Professor

• Anita Lovas – Associate Professor

• Leyla Yusifzada – Assistant Professor

• Justin Huang – Assistant Professor

• Balázs Kotró – Postdoctoral Researcher

• Gergely Czupy – PhD Student

• Xinglin Li – PhD Student

• Restu Hayati – PhD Student

Our director, Helena Naffa received the Corvinus Gold Medal. The Corvinus Gold Medal is awarded to those lecturers, researchers, leaders and professional managers who have made a long-term outstanding impact on the development and reputation of the University through their exceptionally valuable, internationally recognised scientific activities, outstanding teaching work, and who have played a significant role in the education of young researchers, or who have made a great contribution to the renewal of the University and the realisation of its strategic goals as leaders and professional managers. 

Helena is the Head of the Sustainable Finance Research Centre and an Associate Professor at the Institute of Finance, as well as an invited participant in international research consortia. She plays a pioneering role in bringing the financial aspects of biodiversity into scientific discourse and is a dedicated mentor in professional and grant-writing topics. News on Corvinus website.

Our colleagues Anita Lovas and Balázs Kotró won 2nd place in the Green Finance Scientific Awards, for research initiatives issued by MNB, the Central Bank of Hungary. The 3rd place was awarded to colleagues from the Intitute of Finance, at Corvinus. Prof. Barbara Dömötör and Assistant Professor Ferenc Illés. The awards ceremony took place on 20th November, 2025. Press report in Hungarian.

Follow the roundtable discussion on the role of sustainability on capital markets, where Helena Naffa joins this panel discussion and discusses BioSolar and NATUREFIN project outcomes.

This is a collaborate global doctoral reading group focusing on Financial Economics of Climate and Sustainability (FECS). Corvinus University faculty and doctoral students are welcome to join the FECS program offered by leading scholars across the world. Let us know your interest before 10th January, 2025 if you can commit to the program schedule for attendance.
World-class professors of sustainable finance will be presenting starting 4th February, 2025.

The lineup of distinguished speakers include: Ben Caldecott, Caroline Flammer, Geoffrey Heal, Johannes Stroebel, Laura Starks, Marcin Kacperczyk, Patrick Bolton, Peter Tufano, Stefan Reichelstein, Stefano Giglio.

We won a grant as consortium leaders for project NATUREFIN, an Interreg Europe project including seven partners from six European countries. The project targets aligning regional development regulations with sustainable finance to promote biodiversity. Project partners include policy responsible regional authorities from six countries Albania, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Spain, and Portugal. The project starts in May 2025 and lasts 4 years.

NATUREFIN is a play on words, suggesting nature finance as a tool to prevent nature "fin" - the end of nature's capacity to keep Earth livable.

We are excited about making impact at the regional level to preserve biodiversity, that is impacted by anthropogenic activities. The partners are keen to share knowledge and best practice, build capacity, and develop their policy instruments to enhance nature preservation. 

We will participate in the Interreg Europe lead partner seminar in Krakow, Poland on 18th March, 2025.

Project kicks off on 1st May, 2025. Follow us for updates.

We presented our research project GeoBiodivRisk, at the BioSpace Conference at ESA's headquarters in Frascati, Italy on 10-14th February, 2024. See our presentation video here.

BIOSPACE25 is the first international conference exclusively dedicated to the application of Satellite Remote Sensing (SRS) across the various dimensions of biodiversity, and addressing the use of Earth Observations in all realms, from terrestrial, freshwater, coastal to marine ecosystems. 

It is the first edition of a series of BIOSPACE conferences that ESA and its partners intend to organise on a regular basis and which aim to bring together an interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral community of experts. Watch the event videos linked below.

We are project partners in BioSolar, one of the 34 projects funded under the Biodiversa+ 2023/2024 call BiodivNBS. In total, 183 eligible pre-proposals and 108 full proposals were received and evaluated by an independent Evaluation Committee. Further details under the projects tab.

We participated in a panel discussion with alongside diverse stakeholders including investors, regulators and NGOs to discuss the role of financial systems in advancing nature-positive investments, and help close the biodiversity funding gap. We discuss data sources for measurement and good practices. Panel discussions starts at 2:22:50.