After studying mineralogy at the University of Leipzig, Sabine Langkau earned her Ph.D. with a dissertation on metal silicide clusters in solar cell silicon. As part of her doctoral studies, she completed a research fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2010. Since 2013, she has been a research associate at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI in the Sustainability and Infrastructure Systems Department. Since 2020, she has headed the Sustainability Innovations and Policy business unit.