The Academia Europaea (formed in 1988) is the pan-European academy with a membership of over 4000 eminent scholars, drawn from all countries of Europe, and all disciplines, nationalities and geographical locations. The object of Academia Europaea is the advancement and propagation of excellence in scholarship in the humanities, law, the economic, social, and political sciences, mathematics, medicine, and all branches of natural and technological sciences anywhere in the world for the public benefit and for the advancement of the education of the public of all ages. The aim of the Academy is to promote European research, advise governments and international organisations in scientific matters, and further interdisciplinary and international research.
The focus of Karl-Theodor Sturm's research is in Stochastic and Geometric Analysis. In 2016, he was awarded an ERC Advanced Grant for his research project "Metric measure spaces and Ricci curvature – analytic, geometric, and probabilistic challenges". In 2021, he was Plenary Speaker at the 8th European Congress of Mathematics in Portoroz.