As a hub director of the research programme Future Earth, I am dedicated to the idea of providing scientific knowledge for the imperative transformation of our behaviours, societies and economies towards global sustainability. Collaboration sits at the core of our approach. This includes to jointly design the priority topics, produce the research and deliver the knowledge within a global network of researchers and other societal actors. While my personal scientific roots and passion are in ocean research, we also focus on a range of other topics, including how cities can be made role models for sustainability and wellbeing, how we can become more resilient to disaster risk, and generally how we can meet the whole bouquet of Sustainable Development Goals.